Following a triumphant global premiere at Toronto’s Koerner Hall, multi-award winning vocalist, pianist, songwriter and national broadcaster Laila Biali presents “Wintersongs & Holiday Classics.” Experience winter-inspired original music alongside thrilling arrangements of beloved secular and sacred classics featuring some of Canada’s premiere musicians – an enchanted world of snow-swept landscapes, twinkling lights, and the magic of the holiday season.
About Wintersongs
Three years in the making, Laila Biali’s JUNO nominated album Wintersongs offers a cinematic set of winter-themed originals that feature multi JUNO-winner & GRAMMY-nominee Jane Bunnett, the Venuti String Quartet and chamber orchestra conducted by the Emmy winner & GRAMMY nominee Rob Mathes (Bruce Springsteen, Sting). Following the release of her critically acclaimed jazz standards album, Your Requests, Biali returns with a fresh set of music composed from a serene cabin surrounded by snow-capped mountains during a writing retreat in the heart of Canada’s Rocky Mountains. It is Biali’s musical love letter to winter, praised by NUVO Magazine for its “endless range of sonic offerings and interpretations of winter…with the warmth and grandeur of the orchestra that captures the season so profoundly.”
“Masterfully mixes jazz and pop, bringing virtuosity and unpredictability to songs that are concise and catchy.”
Multi award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter, pianist and national radio host Laila Biali has headlined festivals and venues spanning five continents from New York City’s Carnegie Hall to Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, and supported international icon Sting. Her JUNO-nominated 2023 album, Your Requests, featured a stellar cast of guests and received a 4.5 star rave review in All About Jazz. Her previous release, Out of Dust, was also JUNO nominated (in 2021) and won Biali spots on “Best Album” lists around the globe. In 2020, she was honoured by SOCAN Music with the Hagood Hardy Award for Excellence in Songwriting. The previous year, Biali’s eponymous release won her a JUNO for “Vocal Jazz Album of the Year” and top prize at the Canadian Songwriting Competition. She was the youngest-ever double winner at Canada’s National Jazz Awards, named “SOCAN Composer of the Year” and “Keyboardist of the Year” in 2006, and she received her first JUNO nomination for Tracing Light in 2011. When Biali isn’t on stage or in the studio, she’s busy hosting CBC Music’s national radio show, Saturday Night Jazz – a weekly program broadcast to millions of listeners across Canada. And while she continues to earn high honours in the jazz world, Biali’s signature sound transcends genre, making her a favourite among audiences globally. Her highly anticipated seasonal album, Wintersongs, featuring Jane Bunnett, members of the Venuti String Quartet and chamber orchestra, was just nominated for a 2025 JUNO Award, Biali’s 5th nomination as a solo artist.
Please join us!
“It is the ultimate task given to the musician, whether as singer or instrumentalist, to create a unique signature or fingerprint that is instantly recognisable as their own. What is surprising and delightful in Laila Biali is that both as vocalist and pianist she accomplishes this with equal aplomb. She is an exciting and unique talent, and I admire her greatly.”
Programme
1 Drifting Down Ice
2 Rocky Mountain Lullaby
3 Prelude to Outside
4Outside
5Keep on Moving
6Snow
7Dance of the Pines
8Winter Waltz (Belle nuit de Noël, instrumental)
9Jesus, He is Born (‘Iesous ahatonnia’, instrumental)
