Matt Dusk closed the 2011 festival with a shared bill at the Homburg Theatre. The Sunday night finale paired him with Sophie Milman, two of the country's best known jazz voices on one stage. The show was presented by the Confederation Bridge Concert Series.
Dusk came to it with three albums behind him. Two Shots, his debut, had gone gold. Good News, his third, had done the same. He had three number one radio hits in three different countries. All About Me in Canada, Back in Town in Japan, Good News in France . Not many Canadian jazz singers can say that.
The choir school and the piano legend
Dusk started young. He was accepted into St. Michael's Choir School at seven and stayed for eleven years, singing opera and classical music before he heard Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughan at seventeen and changed direction . He went to York University intending to take over the family business, then won the Canadian National Exhibition Rising Star Competition in 1998 and decided music was the thing .
At York he studied under Oscar Peterson. That is not a name you drop casually. Peterson was one of the greatest jazz pianists who ever lived, and he took on a small number of students. Dusk was one of them. The festival bio mentioned it, and it explains something about the way he approaches a song. The phrasing, the swing, the sense of history. It was in the room with him while he learned.
The sound
Dusk calls himself "an entertainer who wants to bring a little jazz into the mainstream." That is an honest description. He takes the Great American Songbook and runs it through a filter that includes Motown, Euro-synth, and contemporary pop. The arrangements are big. The band is tight. The goal is to make a room full of people feel good, and he is very good at it.
He has been compared to Sinatra more times than he probably cares to count. Billboard once wrote that he "impressively brings Las Vegas back to the glory days." Jazz Times said he was "waist deep in grandiose arrangements that are dripping with Sin City excess." These are compliments, delivered in the language of people who take swing seriously.
That night
The Homburg Theatre is the big room at Confederation Centre. Proper stage, proper sound, seats that go up in tiers. A Sunday night finale with Dusk and Milman would have filled it. Two singers, two bands or one shared one, a crowd that had been at the festival all week. The kind of close that sends people home happy.
Dusk was thirty-two that year. Old enough to have learned his craft, young enough to still be hungry. The gold records and the radio hits were nice, but a Sunday night in Charlottetown with a full theatre is the kind of gig that reminds a singer why they do it.
Since then
Dusk kept going. More albums, more tours, more radio hits. He has been nominated for multiple JUNOs and sold over a million records worldwide . He has acted in television films. He still tours with a big band, still plays the standards, still brings a little jazz into the mainstream. The plan is still working.
For the current festival, head to the schedule page or the main lineup page. This archive is kept for looking back.