Guitarist and composer Jessica Ackerley isn’t one to let the vast potential of her instrument go to waste. She’s just as apt to whisper faintly as she is to conjure the infernal clatter of industrial machinery, as likely to offer something resembling a jazz ballad as a molten slab of quasi-metal. Fortunately, she’s also blessed with exquisite taste, meaning that these disparate pieces fit perfectly together to form a cohesive whole. She’s about to launch a duo record with legendary reed player Daniel Carter, where she is heard playing acoustic guitar, and it follows an acclaimed solo outing, Morning/ mourning that bridges both intensity and contemplation, lyricism and texture. Her performance for CMC Presents sees her inimitable and insightful playing mingling with scenes of her new home — Honolulu, where she moved following an extended stint in New York City.
During the past decade, Jessica Ackerley has established herself on the Canadian and American music scenes as a unique and versatile guitarist, composer and bandleader. Born in Alberta, Canada, Jessica now resides in Honolulu after an extended time in New York City, where she worked alongside notable musicians such as Tyshawn Sorey, Daniel Carter, Marc Edwards, Luke Stewart, Patrick Shiroishi, and Jason Nazary, to name a few. She has performed at established venues like John Zorn’s The Stone, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Blue Note, and has toured both as a bandleader and side musician throughout Canada and the United States. Her musical palette is diverse, split between highly refined compositional structure, free improvisation, and Black American Music, as well as noise soundscapes derived from experimental rock, as explored in her collaborative band, ESSi.
In 2017 and 2019, Ackerley released her debut and sophomore albums as a bandleader - Coalesce and A New Kind of Water - to much acclaim, making critics’ year-end lists on Jazz Right Now, Avant Music News, Free Jazz Blog and Jazz Times Magazine. In 2019, she founded The Brink Guitar Festival, a four-day event featuring some of the most innovative players on the instrument such as Miles Okazaki, Elliott Sharp, Wendy Eisenberg, and Dan Lippel, among others. She has been commissioned by Adult Swim to compose and record a track for their 15-song Jazz compilation entitled New Jazz Century alongside other tracks by notable artists Matana Roberts, Anna Webber, and Jaimie Branch. As a recording artist, she has performed and released 11 albums as a side musician and bandleader to date. As an educator and mentor, she has lectured at Grant MacEwan University and University of Toronto, as well as guided many aspiring musicians in private study throughout the years. Jessica continuously expands her musical horizons with various projects, never setting boundaries or compromising her limits as a guitarist and artist.
CMC Presents Multilocation is generously supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, The SOCAN Foundation, FACTOR, The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Foundation. This presentation is also supported by The McLean Foundation and the Canada Arts Presentation Fund.
