Juno Award and Canadian Radio Award nominated recording artist, WENDY LANDS, is a multi-passioned artist; a singer, songwriter, and actor. As a singer and songwriter, she breathes smoky new air into the jazz genre, with inventive, original songs that journey from hummable, snap-alongable up-tempo ditties, to gut-punching, lump-in-throat inducing ballads. If you’re lucky enough to catch her live, you’ll experience her freewheeling, intimate, theatricality, and feel as though you’re not just sitting back and watching, but participating in something very special.
Lands has had many of her songs spun on JAZZ.FM91 and the JAZZCAST podcast, and has played jazz festivals and jazz venues in Canada, the USA, and Europe. In 2017, she headlined the prestigious Ladies Jazz Festival in Gdynia, Poland, a country that embraced her by sending her to the top of the charts, where she happily hovered just beneath Norah Jones and Lady Gaga for weeks. Most recently, in June of 2019, she had a ‘bucket list moment’, when she shared the stage with the legendary Manhattan Transfer at Toronto’s Winter Garden Theatre.
She has also had the distinction of lending her voice to two Oscar-winning films — Polanski’s The Pianist (Wendy Lands Sings The Music of The Pianist – Universal Music) and The Shape of Water (for which she was chosen and directed by Guillermo del Toronto to sing the voice of Eliza). Wendy Lands currently lives in Toronto with her husband Jim Gillard (who is her favourite duet partner, drummer, and musical director) and her daughter Chloe, who is also a budding creator.
This evening’s stellar WENDY LANDS QUARTET features JAMES ADDIS on piano, bassist PETER TELFORD, and JIM GILLARD (drums, voice, trumpet), entertaining in the up-close-and-personal ambience of The Home Smith Bar.