Joe Sealy/Paul Novotny- Jazz

Ken Prue/a Loft Production presents: Award-winning Jazz Duo in concert

Sunday Nov 12 at 3:00 pm

Concert Hall at Victoria Hall

Sealy/Novotny will perform their unique arrangements of standards and original songs from their recordings spanning 1989 to 2008. The duo's recordings have garnered 2 Juno nominations (Dual Vision and Blue Jade) and 1 Juno award win, Africville Stories.

Joe Sealy and Paul Novotny are celebrated Canadian musicians and composers. Their journey together as a piano and bass duo began in 1989 with their first co-led recording titled Double Entendre, on which they arranged and performed originals and standard songs from the Great American songbook. Their timeless recordings have achieved international acclaim, several Juno nominations, and a Juno Award for Joe Sealy’s iconic Africville Suite in 1996. Their piano and bass duo concert repertoire continues to evolve while it remains rich with visceral emotion and melodies that invite the audience to immerse themselves in the moment.

In Joe Sealy’s successful six-decade musical career he has performed as an actor, theatrical music director, studio musician, screen composer, radio show host, and concert pianist. Sealy has toured extensively with Blood Sweat and Tears, and The Piano Mans’s Daughter with Veronica Tennant and Sylvia Tyson. His own Africville Suite tours have brought his songs and Afro-Canadian story to the USA, Norway, and Denmark. From Halifax to Vancouver to Inuvik—Canadians have heard Joe’s music and stories about Canada’s oldest urban black community called Africville, a community which Joe’s family helped to found in the mid 1800s. In recognition of his career achievement Joe Sealy was invested in The Order of Canada in 2010.

Paul Novotny MA, PhD (c) is a musician-bandleader, composer and published academic author. He has composed main themes for CBC—The National, George Stroumboulopoulos—The Hour, and CBC News Now. Novotny has performed with jazz luminaries Cedar Walton, Kenny Wheeler, Geoff Keezer, and with singers David Clayton Thomas, Roger Whitaker, Holy Cole, Molly Johnson, and Jackie Richardson. As well as producing the Africville Suite, Paul produced and performed on Carol Welsman’s 1995 Juno nominated recording titled Lucky to Be Me. He has released two of his own records with Oscar Peterson protégé Robi Botos on piano and is an elected board member of the Screen Composers Guild of Canada (SCGC).

Sealy and Novotny continue to concertize together and recently they performed Joe’s Africville Stories at Toronto’s Meridian Hall while opening for the Grammy Award winning jazz bassist Christian McBride who performed his Afro-American music suite titled The Movement Revisited. In September 2023 Sealy/Novotny performed at Toronto's Jazz Bistro.

On Nov 12 at The Concert Hall, Victoria Hall, Sealy/Novotny will perform their unique arrangements of standards and original songs from their recordings spanning 1989 to 2008. The duo's recordings have garnered 2 Juno nominations (Dual Vision and Blue Jade) and 1 Juno award win, Africville Stories.

Discography:

Double Entendre—1989 Dual Vision—1994 Juno Nominee Africville Suite—1996 Juno Winner Blue Jade—1999 Juno Nominee The Man in The Red Suit—2004 Songs—2009

Tickets are $39 plus hst & service fee and available at the Concert Hall Box Office: 855-372-2210