2026 Ottawa Jazz Festival — Sunday, June 28

Sunday, June 28, 2026 Lineup

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

OLG Main Stage (Confederation Park)

8:30 pm — Ibrahim Maalouf

After two prestigious GRAMMY® Awards nominations, Ibrahim Maalouf returns with his 19th highly innovative album.

In terms of philosophical, historical and musical aspects, T.O.M.A, which stands for "Trumpets of Michel Ange", is a great adventure that takes us to a world where folklore and modernity become one.

As always, Ibrahim's music strikes the perfect balance between sophistication and approachability, making it both challenging and inviting for a diverse audience.

"T.O.M.A” is first and foremost a mixed album, a true blend of influences where the festive and nostalgic East is expressed with a rare freedom.

“T.O.M.A” is also the name of Ibrahim Maalouf's new trumpet brand. Designed by Ibrahim and instrument maker A.JAMINET in collaboration with Antoine Courtois of the French Buffet Crampon group, Ibrahim's aim with this new instrument is to encourage trumpet players over the world to take an interest in this musical revolution.

Last but not least, 'T.O.M.A' is a big celebration that brings together generations, amateurs and professionals alike, along with special guests!

Elgin St. Stage (Confederation Park)

7:30 pm — Curtis Nowosad’s Noisy World

• Curtis Nowosad - drums
• Joanna Majoko - vocals & percussion
• Andrew Renfroe - guitar
• Jared Beckstead-Craan - bass

Curtis Nowosad is a JUNO-nominated, NYC-based jazz drummer, composer, educator and recording artist. Having made his home in NYC for over a decade, the Winnipeg native has established himself as an integral part of the NYC and international jazz scene, both as a bandleader and a sideperson.

Curtis has played in the bands of many top jazz artists of multiple generations, including Jazzmeia Horn, Jane Monheit, Marc Cary, Jimmy Greene, Jocelyn Gould, Philip Harper, Bria Skonberg, Steve Nelson, Caity Gyorgy, Craig Harris and Braxton Cook, with whom he has toured extensively in Europe, Asia and North America and performed on ABC’s Good Morning America and NPR’s groundbreaking video series Tiny Desk Concerts. He has also played with four NEA Jazz Masters: Candido Camero, Dave Liebman, Jimmy Owens and Ron Carter, and recorded with a fifth, Kenny Barron. He has led bands at many notable clubs including Smalls, Dizzy’s and the Blue Note, as well as every major jazz festival in Canada and several in the US.

Curtis’ new release on La Reserve Records, I Am Doing My Best, is his fourth full-length album and his first to feature all-original music and lyrics. Co-produced by two-time JUNO winner Joey Landreth, the album is a radically honest journey through healing and self-reflection in an increasingly demanding world. His group, Curtis Nowosad’s Noisy World, embodies this deeply human ethos and features the soul and artistry of vocalist Joanna Majoko, guitarist Andrew Renfroe and bassist Jared Beckstead-Craan.

Curtis is an endorser of Yamaha drums, Vic Firth sticks and Zildjian cymbals.

10:30 pm — Kassa Overall

If you’re trying to understand the future of jazz, turn your attention to Kassa Overall.

Revered by living icons and underground tastemakers, he began his career behind the drum kit. Raised in Seattle, some of his earliest gigs were at a Starbucks on the corner of 23rd and Jackson, an intersection name-checked in Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Posse’s on Broadway”, just blocks from Jimi Hendrix’s childhood home and down the street from Garfield High School, an alma mater Kassa shares with Seattle’s black musical pantheon: Jimi, Quincy Jones, and Digable Planets’s Ishmael Butler.

Kassa was raised in the city's South End by parents he describes as a “black bohemian father and a white hippie mother”. One favored Ornette Coleman, the other Bob Dylan. They had met at a live-in spiritual center, pursuing a path of meditation and prayer. Kassa emerged from the womb at home, accompanied by the sounds of tabla drums. After drums came rap music. Early inspirations were DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (“Parents Just Don’t Understand”) and Public Enemy (“Fight The Power”).

“Our musical creation was always deeply connected to a bigger purpose and a kind of revolutionary tone,” he says. “It was always tied to saying something.”

At the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Kassa spent his days studying jazz drums and music theory, and his evenings making beats in his dorm room, often staying home from parties to pull all-nighters in front of his MPC, studio monitors, and an open Pro Tools session. At Oberlin, he met musicians who remain his closest musical collaborators to this day. He also met his greatest mentor and north star, Billy “Jabali” Hart, an NEA Jazz Master and veteran of Herbie Hancock’s experimental sextet Mwandishi.

The summer after graduation, he landed a room in NYC, living in bassist-composer Bill Lee’s Fort Greene house, the same house Spike Lee grew up in, for $200 a month. A call from piano legend Geri Allen to play at the Village Vanguard sparked the beginning of his touring career, leading to work as an in-demand sideman with Theo Croker, Jon Batiste, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer and Gary Bartz.

Kassa’s groundbreaking solo projects have established him as a driving force on the international stage, fielding support from visionaries including Thom Yorke, Iggy Pop, Virgil Abloh, and more. His first studio album GO GET ICE CREAM AND LISTEN TO JAZZ (2019) bore witness to the emergence of a sound that layered the virtuosic drumming, polyrhythmic rapping, and meticulous production techniques he had honed separately. On I THINK I’M GOOD, released in 2020 on Brownswood Recordings, his voice continued to crystallize, critiquing the injustices of the carceral system, the pharmaceutical industry, and anti-black racism. ANIMALS, released in 2023 on Warp Records, he further showcased the breadth of his, songwriting, production chops and unique rhythmic sensibility, from Roland 808s to abstract, modernist drumming.

From Newport to North Sea, his band has garnered wide acclaim for their live performances, which Gilles Peterson has called “completely surreal”. He has appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and released several critically acclaimed mixtapes.

On CREAM, his fourth solo studio album, Kassa Overall pays homage to the twin passions of his youth — hip-hop and jazz drums in the tradition of Elvin Jones. With this collection of instrumentals, the visionary drummer and producer transforms beloved songs from the 90s and aughts into timeless standards that are rhythmically adventurous, witty, and often sublime.

He is a 2025 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Prize.

“Raw, underground, and chaotic…one of modern jazz music’s most audacious futurists.” - Pitchfork

“Doing what he always does — pushing musical boundaries and finding new ways to express himself through a unique blend of experimental hip-hop-infused jazz.” - NPR

“Sharing a common ancestor, jazz and hip-hop ought to be a natural fit — but nobody has ever quite made this fusion feel like theirs. Enter Kassa Overall, the soft-spoken drummer, producer and M.C., who plays a different game.” - New York Times