Jesse Ryan is a Toronto based saxophonist, composer, arranger, and educator. He has a keen interest in the connections between jazz and Afro-Caribbean musical traditions and seeks to take Caribbean jazz out of its niche of ethnic fusion, and into the mainstream.

Ryan was born and raised in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. He was surrounded by a rich heritage of music and is the late grandson of one of the islands’ calypso veterans, the late Clifton Ryan, aka the “Mighty Bomber.” He began learning to play the steelpan drum at the age of ten and was encouraged by his teacher to pursue music seriously. Ryan picked up the saxophone by fluke a few years later. He told his father he wanted to start learning the trumpet, and his father gave him a DVD on how to play the saxophone.

He studied for one year at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts before moving to Toronto in 2013 to complete his studies at Humber College. Upon graduating in 2017, Ryan put a band together and performed his original compositions for two years before stepping into a studio to record his debut album, Bridges, released in 2020. The album features Tambrin drumming, a style unique to Tobago, through collaboration with the Mt. Cullane Tambrin band. Bridges received a Juno nomination for Jazz Album of the Year (solo) in 2022. That same year he released a single entitled “The Night Before She Passed,” a song dedicated to his mother, who he lost to cancer in July 2017.

Ryan received the 2020 Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Jazz Artist Award, a foundation for which he now serves on the board of directors. Additionally, he runs a podcast called “Keep Taking Ground Saxophone Podcast,” that features conversations with in-demand and award-winning saxophonists from around the world and across jazz and contemporary styles. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Music Composition at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and teaching at Humber College.

He has performed alongside, and recorded with artists such as Rachel Therrien, Amhed Mitchell, Larnell Lewis, Joy Lapps-Lewis, Daniel Barnes, Joe “Jojo” Bowden, and Alex Bird. He has been commissioned as a composer by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, and worked with a variety of jazz, gospel, and world music artists as an arranger.

Ryan continues to communicate transcendent ideas through his music, incorporating his cultural roots and his expertise in the modern jazz idiom.

Awards

• 2020 Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Jazz Artist Award