About

Sebastian Bailey is a saxophonist, improviser, composer, and lecturer from Montreal, Canada. His discography includes Silhouettes of Silence (Fresko Music, 2012), Love Song for the Nation (Vineyard Records, 2016), and Ensemble de Magnac (self-released, 2018), on which his composition “Rocking Chair in 3 Sittings” garnered interest from the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers and was presented at the University of Northern Colorado in 2018. He has received awards such as the Calder Spanier Prize for Composition and the Irene R. Miller Anoush Khoshkish Fellowship in Music for his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto. From 2019–2021, he was the Head of the Music Department at the German International School Toronto.

From 2017 to 2020, Sebastian worked with pianist Jean-Michel Pilc on the Improvisation Workshop Project (IWP), where he coordinated collective improvisation sessions. Interested in ethnomusicological, historiographical, and pedagogical perspectives, Sebastian's research examines how stylistic plurality, collective collaboration, and experimental practices in jazz are taught. He presented his research at the 4th Annual International Network of Artistic Research in Jazz (INARJ) Conference in Vienna (2024) and most recently concluded teaching a course on artistic agency in contemporary culture in the general studies department of the Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin). Bailey has conceptualized a new course offering that focuses on reclaiming lost voices from hegemonic jazz narratives, designed to equip students with the discursive tools needed to address contemporary cultural issues.