2026 Ottawa Jazz Festival — Friday, June 26

Friday, June 26, 2026 Lineup

Daily lineup at Confederation Park. Headliner: WILLOW on OLG Main Stage.

OLG Main Stage (Confederation Park)

6:30 pm — Fawn Wood

Fawn Wood is a Cree and Salish singer, songwriter, and traditional artist celebrated for her powerful voice and cultural storytelling. A JUNO Award winner for Traditional Indigenous Artist of the Year, she has also earned numerous Native American Music Awards, Aboriginal People’s Choice Music Awards, and Indian Summer Music Awards.

Her award-winning albums include Iskwewak, Kikawiynaw, and Kakike, as well as collaborative projects with her partner Dallas Waskahat, Til the End and Blessings, and multiple recordings with her powwow group, Cree Confederation. Fawn’s music has been featured in films, TV shows, and documentaries, alongside appearances on Joe Pickett and Entertainment Tonight Canada’s Indigenous Icons.

A seasoned performer since youth, she is also a motivational speaker and cultural educator, with a B.A. in Plains Cree Language and an M.A. in Indigenous Languages. For three years, she hosted Alberta’s hit radio program The Cree Chatter Hour, sharing free language lessons and cultural teachings.

9:00 pm — WILLOW 🎤 headliner

Grammy nominated musician, actress, author, and creative WILLOW is at the forefront of redefining musical boundaries and setting new standards of innovation and authenticity. WILLOW has established herself as this generation’s eclectic musical trailblazer. Her unique blend of introspective lyrics, ethereal melodies, and powerful collaborations cements her as a boundary-pushing artist, resonating with audiences and leaving an indelible mark on the contemporary music landscape.

WILLOW has built a critically acclaimed discography traversing a breadth of sounds, from neo-soul (2015’s Ardipithecus) and psychedelic folk (2019’s WILLOW), to pop-punk (2021’s lately I feel EVERYTHING) and experimental hard rock (2022’s ). Her sixth album, empathogen, pushed the envelope even further.

Produced by WILLOW, Eddie Benjamin and Chris Greatti, empathogen is a genre-bending album. Inspired by a meditative mix of jazz, classical and indigenous tribal music, with features from Jon Batiste and St. Vincent, it sees WILLOW tapping into “ancestral energy” to evoke a sense of mystery, playfulness and depth. Coming off the back of two heavy guitar albums and countless achievements, including 1B streams on sleeper hit “Wait A Minute,” empathogen, which earned WILLOW two Grammy nominations and debuted at #1 on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Album chart, brings things back to earth. With soul searching lyrics and her vocals taking center stage, WILLOW has created something truer to herself than ever before.

Up next, she is set to executive produce and voice roles in anime films alongside her brother Jaden under the N LITE umbrella. The Black-owned media company and anime studio has WILLOW signed onto their horror/thriller WEBE: SPIRIT DETECTIVE which is inspired by Gullah Geechee folklore. She also recently joined the cast of SLIME, an anime-inspired pre-apocalyptic sci-fi monster film. She will be seen alongside Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, Teyana Taylor, Anna Sawai, John Cho and John Boyega.

Azrieli Studio (National Arts Centre)

7:00 pm — Bobby Previte's Pocket Orchestra plays Bitches Brew

Bobby Previte is a composer and performer whose work explores the nexus between notated and improvised music. Previte is the recipient of the 2015 Greenfield Prize for Music and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, as well as multiple awards for composition from the NEA, NYFA, and NYSCA. Mr. Previte has been an artist-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, Civitella Ranieri, The Montalvo Arts Center, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and nine times at the MacDowell Colony. Masterclasses include Princeton University, the Eastman School of Music, The New School, and NYU. He is the creator of “Music 360º - The Improvisation Workshop,” a five day intensive conducted twice yearly. His original compositions have been recorded and released on Sony, Elektra, Nonesuch, Rykodisc, Cantaloupe, New World, and Rarenoise. Recent larger works include NO BELLS, NO WHISTLES, for solo drum set, TERMINALS, with SO Percussion, Zeena Parkins, Jen Shyu, Nels Cline and John Medeski, MASS, for choir, pipe organ, and metal trio, and RHAPSODY, a song cycle. Most recent is BLUEPRINTS, a free-wheeling, spontaneous, conducted reading of, and improvisation on, fragments of every composition he has written from 1979 to the present, projected on screen for ensemble and audience members alike to read.

One of the greatest works of the twentieth century, Bitches Brew, released in 1970, changed the entire landscape of not only Jazz, but Rock, Funk, Soul, and Pop as well. Hailed as a masterpiece upon release, it has become even more influential in the fullness of time. Previte and musicians begin at the point Bitches Brew left off, and using it as a springboard, point towards new directions.

Elgin St. Stage (Confederation Park)

7:30 pm — Witch Prophet

• Witch Prophet - Vocals, Loop Pedal
• SUN SUN - DJ
• Kodai Okuno - Drums
• Izzy Collins - Guitar
• Feven Kidane - Trumpet

Witch Prophet is a Toronto-based, Ethiopian/Eritrean singer-songwriter, producer, and creative visionary whose work blends jazz fusion, neo-soul, and trip-hop, with multilingual vocals in English, Tigrinya, and Amharic. Drawing on her ancestral lineage and lived experience, she creates spiritually resonant, groove-centered music that feels both futuristic and deeply rooted.

Her critically acclaimed discography (including The Golden Octave, D.N.A Activation, and Gateway Experience) has earned praise from Billboard, Pitchfork, Complex, FADER, CBC Music, Exclaim!, Bandcamp, and more, along with Polaris Prize shortlist and longlist recognition. Known for her hypnotic vocal style, rich harmonies, and boundary-pushing sonic worlds, Witch Prophet has performed at major festivals such as Montreal Jazz Festival, Vancouver Jazz Festival, Winnipeg Folk Festival, The Great Escape (UK), SXSW (Austin), MAMA Festival (Paris), and New Skool Rules (Rotterdam). She has shared stages with and opened for Sudan Archives, Tash Sultana, JPEGMAFIA, KeiyaA, CLIPPING, Pierre Kwenders, Begonia, Lido Pimienta, and more.

Her forthcoming album, Words Are Spells / Thoughts Are Magic (March 18, 2026), marks her most expansive work yet - a dual-sided project exploring the power of language, thought, and intention. Produced by Witch Prophet and her wife/collaborator SUN SUN, the album merges ancestral resonance with contemporary soul, offering a transformative musical experience. A magnetic performer and genre-defying storyteller, Witch Prophet continues to carve a singular path in today’s global music landscape.

10:30 pm — The Dip

The Dip is a Seattle-based Rhythm and Blues band that is known for its poignant songwriting, detailed arrangements, and vintage sound. Featuring a three-piece horn section, the group’s music harkens back to earlier soul and funk influences while hinting at the jazz foundations that brought the band’s members together. Along with singer and guitarist Tom Eddy, bassist Mark Hunter and drummer Jarred Katz are equally at home in a tight-pocketed groove as they are spacious free-improvisation. Trumpet player Brennan Carter joined by saxophonists Evan Smith and Levi Gillis serve as the band’s melodic counterpoint, playing off Eddy’s vocals to create a distinct sonic character that has drawn in millions of listeners to date.

‘Love Direction’, the follow-up to 2022’s ‘Sticking With It’ (which landed at #1 on the Billboard Current R&B Albums Chart) is the band’s fourth full-length studio album and second for Dualtone Records, due out 7/12/24. This new record is the sound of the band taking their next step forward. The interplay of old and new is on full display throughout the album; and, the group augments their classic sound with an expanded instrumentation throughout. Eddy says of the album’s inspiration: “As you get further along in a relationship, sometimes you lose your way. The things that came easily in the beginning get hard. The love is still there, it’s just that people and life are complicated. Sometimes you don’t have the tools in the toolbox to figure out what you need to do to support the other person, so you have to get help and ask for directions.”

Still, despite the title, this latest record isn’t a collection of straightforward love songs, but an investigation into the different angles and challenges that relationships can bring. Expanding on the album’s theme, Eddy further notes “These aren’t ‘Love Songs’ in the most obvious sense. They deal with the middle stages, the hinterlands of love and life together – figuring someone out and what they need, learning how to communicate, and examining your own faults. We set out to write music that felt more grown, a little wiser. The songs that emerged all pointed in the Love Direction.”

Their last album cycle saw the band headline and sell-out shows at iconic venues across the country. They have also had the opportunity to support new friends like Lake Street Dive and The Black Pumas, while also appearing at major festivals including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. No strangers to the road, this new album represents a reflection on the band’s touring gravitas as well as the promise of a new destination appearing on the horizon. Directions now in hand, The Dip is looking forward to furthering this exploration into all matters of the heart by bringing this expansive and detailed new recording to life in their next travels together.

Fourth Stage (National Arts Centre)

6:30 pm — daltonists

• Roman Wroblewski - synthesizers
• Piotr “orz” Orzechowski - bass guitar
• Jacek Rezner - drums

daltonists is an experimental trio [genre: leftfield jam], referring by name to color blindness, an inborn defect of vision. The handicap of human nature has become the idée fixe of the lineup, the main inspiration and motivation for creation. The musicians combine the colors of contemporary jazz, Afrobeat, dub, African and club music.

Despite their short existence (June 2021), daltonists have become a revelation on the local scene, playing at several prestigious festivals in Poland, including Jazz Jantar, True Tone Festival and OFF Festival. During the Crossroads Showcase Festival in Ostrava won a special award for the best act chosen by music industry professionals and that ended with invitations to other festivals in 2026/2027. The band’s debut mini album titled “daltonists” was released on May 9, 2024, and its Youtube version proved to be a sensation, garnering a huge number of positive comments from around the world. Their tracks are often played by leading DJs on radio stations in Poland and Europe (Soweto Kinch - BBC 3, Tom Ravenscroft – BBC 6/RinseFM, Marcin Harper – 4th National Polish Radio).

2nd album "gradient" was released in November 2025 with Folded Music, UK based record label and publisher, with support from PR Agency – 7AM Music Promotion (Blockhead, Emancipator, Arms and Sleepers, Asta Hiroki).

A partially sold-out concert tour across Poland and Europe promoting the first album took place in spring 2025, and another tour promoting the second album is planned for spring/summer 2026 in Europe and Canada.

Sounds like: Todd Terje playing BadBadNotGood.

9:00 pm — Tomoki Sanders

Tomoki (they/them) was born in New York City, NY on November 13th, 1994. They started playing drums and percussions at the age of 4, and started Eb Clarinet at the age of 6. At the age of 10, their father got them an alto saxophone. Sanders switched to tenor saxophone at the age of 14.

They had their first gig at the age of 13, and had been performing around various schools, venues, and clubs around the Kanto Region area in Japan.

They had their first recording (as a sideman) with the psychedelic rock band TENGOKU BATAKE JAPON (天国畑JAPON) on their second album, “Karomi No Step" [かろみのすてっぷ].

In 2014, Sanders attended at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, studying performance and music production. Sanders studied with world-renowned musicians, such as Ralph Peterson Jr., Billy Kilson, Neal Smith, Tia Fuller, George Garzone, Frank Tiberi, Raydar Ellis, Jackie Beard, Divo Govoni, Shannon LeClaire, Dave Santoro, Ed Tomassi, Jim Odgren, etc. Sanders Graduated in 2018.

Sanders currently lives in New York City, performing alongside such as Pharoah Sanders, Kassa Overall, Moses Sumney, Ravi Coltrane, Maurice “Mobetta” Brown, Nikara Warren, Tatsuya Nakamura, Taylor McFerrin, Mark de Clive-Lowe , Raymond Mcmorrin, Tatsuya Nakamura (NEW YORK UNIT), KYOTO JAZZ SEXTET, Matthew Garrison, George Garzone, Hajime Yoshizawa, ROOT SOUL, Fumio Itabashi, TOKU, Jack DeJohnette Trio and Trap Music Orchestra, etc.