Laila Biali

An award-winning Canadian jazz vocalist, composer and pianist, Laila Biali has hosted CBC Radio 2’s Saturday Night Jazz since 2017. Contemporary jazz blended with modern pop and Great American Songbook standards shapes her distinctive sound. The 2011 release Tracing Light earned a Juno Award nomination. SOCAN named her its first-ever double winner, recognizing her simultaneously as keyboardist of the year and singer of the year. Three albums appeared on Germany’s ACT label: the self-titled Laila Biali in 2018, Out of Dust in 2020, and Your Requests in 2023. In 2024 she self-produced and issued Wintersongs, a set of original seasonal songs featuring Jane Bunnett and the Venuti String Quartet.

Piano study began before age five. Classical training continued through elementary school and culminated in graduation from the Royal Conservatory of Music, where an enduring passion for jazz also took root. Scholarships brought her at nineteen to Toronto’s Humber College. At twenty-three she issued her debut, Introducing the Laila Biali Trio, and captured the CBC Galaxie Prize (Rising Star Award) at the National Jazz Awards. Two years afterward she received SOCAN Keyboardist of the Year and Composer of the Year honors at the same awards.

Relocating to New York, she accepted assorted solo engagements and assembled her earliest trios while taking every available job. Her dual skills as singer and pianist led to tours with the musicians already mentioned, during which she met her future husband, jazz drummer Ben Wittman, while working with Cole. Professional regard grew steadily, and her own trio began attracting attention. The CBC issued her second album, From Sea to Sky, in 2007. Sting hired her as backing vocalist for several American television appearances and included her in the band for the DVD-recorded concert A Winter’s Night: Live from Durham Cathedral in 2009. Subsequent work followed with Botti, Vega and others. Tracing Light arrived in 2010 as her first outing on her own label and again received a Juno nomination. Annual appearances at Glenn Gould Hall became eagerly anticipated events; the 2011 album Live in Concert: Sold Out reached playlists at more than eighty North American stations.

Session contributions continued even as motherhood shifted priorities, making regular trio performances in New York and Toronto her central outlet. She also began composing original material. The widely praised 2014 album House of Many Rooms was tracked with a quintet, orchestral horns and strings, and the Toronto Mass Choir; she supplied both the songs and the arrangements. Biali belongs to the all-female New York neo-classical crossover quartet Rose & the Nightingale, whose members tour with Esperanza Spalding. Solo promotion of the record persisted, including a filmed performance at the 2016 TED Summit. July of the next year found her guest-hosting CBC Radio 2’s nightly jazz program Tonic; in September she assumed the regular host role for Saturday Night Jazz. Throughout this period she and co-producer/drummer/husband Wittman continued recording.

February brought the self-titled Laila Biali, the first of three ACT releases, containing nine originals—including “Queen of Hearts,” co-written with Randy Bachman—and three covers: David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” Coldplay’s “Yellow,” and Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today.” The star-studded lineup featured trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Out of Dust followed in 2020 with a larger ensemble that included a full horn section and saxophonist John Ellis.

Her third ACT album, Your Requests, appeared in 2023 after she invited submissions from social-media followers, selected ten standards, and applied her distinctive arranging touch; the regular sextet was joined by guests Kurt Elling, Anat Cohen, Gregoire Maret, Emilie-Claire Barlow and Caity Gyorgy. Wintersongs, a nine-track collection offering spacious reflection on the season, arrived in 2024 with Jane Bunnett and Sam Yahel among the large ensemble. Its final track, “Jesus, He Is Born,” is credited to seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf.