JazzFest – Nancy Walker Quartet

Pianist and composer Nancy Walker has been recognized with honours Canada-wide, including the Montréal Jazz Festival’s Grand Prix de Jazz, the National Jazz Awards Keyboardist Of The Year Award, two JUNO nominations (2006 and 2026), and an induction into the Mississauga Music Walk Of Fame. Nancy has several discs to her credit as leader. In 2025 she released Deeper Down, featuring eight of her original compositions, and garnering a 2026 JUNO nomination for Jazz Album Of The Year – Solo. Nancy keeps busy as a side player (live and in the studio) with instrumentalists and singers alike. Recently she can be heard on the 2024 recording Here’s To Life by John Neudorf (on which she was both pianist and co-producer), and Sarah Jerrom’s 2025 JUNO-nominated Magpie. Nancy has toured internationally and recorded with many artists outside the jazz idiom, including Raffi, Sylvia Tyson, Roger Whittaker and The Parachute Club. She is also a composer of choral music. In collaboration with The Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Nancy was honoured to be commissioned to compose the music for a full-length musical theatre production (SATB chorus and soloists) entitled FIRST. In 2020-21 the production received The Ontario Historical Society’s Indigenous History Award. Later, the Mississauga Children’s Choir commissioned Nancy to adapt one of the songs from FIRST (Water, with lyrics by Steven Campbell) for their senior children’s choir, and it was performed in the choir’s 2023/24 concert season. She has taught on the music faculties of Humber College and York University, and she herself holds a Master of Arts in Music (Composition) from York University.