Okanagan Youth Jazz Orchestra is an elite group of high school jazz musicians from BC’s Interior communities from Kamloops to Penticton. We rehearse weekly, studying big band music by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich and more, with a strong focus on Canadian composers and arrangers like Rob McConnell, Joe Sullivan, John Macleod, Christine Jensen, Ian McDougall and Paul Tynan.

 

OYJO will be presenting concerts in many communities throughout
the Interior, and hope to share the stage with some of the school ensembles our members play in.

OYJO is directed by trumpeter Nicholas Dyson, whose love for big band music is contagious. Nicholas has performed as lead trumpet in the big bands of Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Hilario Duran, Jamie Cullum, Solomon Douglas Swingtet and more, and in the trumpet sections of Roy Hargrove Big Band, Natalie Cole, Paul Anka and Barbra Streisand. Nicholas was also the founder and director of Capital Youth Jazz Orchestra in Ottawa from 2009-2019. CYJO was an educationally driven jazz big band, made up primarily of students from Ottawa area universities whose music programs lacked a big band component. Nicholas taught at Carleton University Jazz Camp 2009-2019, hosted Trumpet Bootcamp for several years at Alcorn Music Studios, and has adjudicated festivals, presented clinics and masterclasses across North America.

In addition to OYJO, Nicholas’ company Bastion Education Productions will also be producing Brass Bootcamp starting in 2024, as well as co-producing a new monthly Jazz concert and Jam Session with Effie Arts Collective in Kamloops.