July 20, 1978 - September 23, 2024

Raise a glass to Julia Cleveland, founder of Bluebird’s Thursday night music series. Inspiring musician, wonderful friend, beloved and integral member of our Bluebird community. Without you there is no this.

You are forever missed & we are forever blessed to have known you.

A little Julia:

Julia Cleveland Blue Legs

Links to her final show at Bluebird September 19, 2024:

First Set

Second Set

Canada’s Finest Faux-Hawaiian Ensemble! The absolute perfect way to spend a cosy winter eve.

Burke Carroll Presents: The Hulagoons Play Yellow Roses

Bassist and composer Frank Rooney’s F3 trio - featuring Morgan Childs on drums and Josh Smiley on piano - explores great melodies, playing foot-tapping standards and original tunes with bold swing and deep emotion.

For two decades, Frank has performed with his own ensembles, big bands, and small jazz groups like the G Street Trio and the Esplanade Jazz Collective, and played and recorded with pop/rock and roots performers.

"It’s fair to say that John Borra has seen and done it all within the Toronto alternative music scene, from witnessing the first stirrings of punk as a kid in the late 1970s, to joining his first bands at the dawn of the alt-rock movement in the 1980s, and forging a solo career during the roots music renaissance that followed." Jason Schneider, Roots Music Canada.

John Borra released his critically acclaimed Blue Wine in 2020 followed by Cassettes in Common in 2022.  The latter is a tribute to fellow singer-songwriters such as  Ron Sexmith, Frank Nevada, Kyp Harness, Bob Snyder and Sam Larkin, all originally released on cassette tapes.

johnborra.com

Matthew Lawrence is a Toronto folk-singer. He writes, but not much. He spends most of his time hunting down hard-to-find (and not-so-hard-find) songs from any folk tradition he can get his hands on, though he generally seems to land somewhere between American, Irish, English, and (his own) Yiddish folk music. So I guess that puts him somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic (though he avoids shanties if at all possible).

Angry songs, love songs, have-another-drink songs, don't-sleep-with-your-lord's-wife-while-he's-away songs...and, always a sucker for nostalgia, a bit of the old 60's Greenwich village (though requests for Simon and Garfunkel will incur extra fees). Folk music is cool...I promise.

Sarah Osborne is a singer-songwriter from the west coast of Canada. With a voice that evokes a little hard living and raw nostalgia, she shapes her own blend of folk, country, blues, and jazz.

Hailing from a musical family and a background in Marine Biology, this songstress and sea queen draws inspiration from the ballads of her childhood and the beauty and harshness of the natural world.

Rory Lavelle is a singer-songwriter who recently returned to Toronto after a long stint in Berlin. His lyrical piano ballads have earned comparisons to classic 70s troubadours like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, while his politically-charged lyrics place him squarely in the tradition of pop radicals like John Lennon.

Lavelle's debut EP Just Watch TV and Worry was released in 2016, on the eve of Trump’s election. In 2017 he released the Cassini EP, a space-themed song cycle about our precarious planetary situation. His next full-length, Cul-De-Sac, was recorded at Berlin’s renowned Funkhaus studios, and marked his first release since relocating to Berlin. A new LP, 'Persons Without Bodies', is forthcoming in 2025.

All your favourite hits!

Donnybrook is an original, modern, soul jazz and straight ahead co-led organ trio from Toronto, Canada. The trio concentrates on a mix of historic repertoire and original music in the tradition of the great Hammond organ trios of the 1960s. Guitarist Ben Bishop, organist Jeff McLeod, and drummer Morgan Childs joined forces in 2015 with a mutual interest in the classic sounds of the records of Jimmy Smith, Don Patterson, Grant Green, and Dr. Lonnie Smith, as well as modern organ groups like Mike LeDonne’s Groover Quartet and the Larry Goldings Trio, with a goal to develop a unique identity and sound in that tradition.

Donnybrook has appeared across Canada at prominent jazz venues including The Yardbird Suite, Buckingjam Palace, The Bassment Jazz Club, The Rex Hotel, The Burdock Room, and 3030 Dundas, as well as at the Markham Jazz Festival, Brampton World of Jazz Festival, Toronto International Jazz Festival, and the Haliburton Forest Festival.

donnybrooktrio.bandcamp.com

A Toronto-based quartet featuring Tory Cassis, Murray Foster, Jeff Ulster and David MacDougall.

Along with playing 30’s and 40’s vocal jazz standards by the likes of Nat King Cole and Fats Waller, The Lesters cover songwriters such as Tom Waits, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell, as well as writing their own originals. The result is a setlist that spans a hundred years of popular music and yet remains entirely cohesive.

The Lesters combine into a sound that is intimate, intricate, swinging and soulful, with Tory’s brandy-dipped baritone soaring above it all.

thelesterstrio.com

John Showman “one of the very best and most influential fiddle players in Canada” (Steve Pritchard, CIUT 89.5 FM) & Chris Coole, whose “banjo playing is, frankly, incomparable” (Mitch Podolak co-founder of the Winnipeg and Vancouver Folk Festivals) come together for a fiddle and banjo tour-de-force: playing both the classics from the American songbook and originals. Not to be missed!

lonesomeace.com

youtube.com