About

For Musique Royale’s opening concert of the Wednesdays at Noon series, hear a performance celebrating Canada Day featuring Nicola Miller, saxophone; Chris Donnelly, piano; Nicholas D’Amato, bass; and Nick Fraser, drums.

Wednesdays at Noon is a series of music presentations at St. John’s Anglican Church in Lunenburg. Concerts are roughly 45 minutes in length and are held every Wednesday at 12 pm through July and August. Performances feature artists from the local and national scene in an eclectic mix of presentations. These performances will draw residents and tourists to enjoy music within beautiful and historic setting of St John’s, the second-oldest Anglican church in Canada, and first church established in Lunenburg. Admission is $10 at the door, youth free. Programming supports the St John’s Music Program.

About the Artists

Nicola Miller – saxophone

Saxophonist and Composer Nicola Miller is based on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, where she has become a vital part of the maritime creative music ecosystem. Weaving endless sonic curiosity into a jazz foundation, the music she plays and writes effortlessly traverses boundaries of style and approach.

Miller has appeared in performances alongside a diverse cross-section of artists including Nicole Rampersaud, Charlotte Hüg, Nicholas D’Amato, India Gailey, Enrique Luna, Sam Wilson, Uri Caine, Tim Crofts, Glenn Patscha, and Nick Halley. She’s been featured at Guelph Jazz Festival, Open Waters and Halifax Jazz Festivals and also performed in contexts that span Berlin’s Volksbühne and Jazz Am Helmholtzplatz to Acadia University’s Physics Department. She is the recipient of the 2025 Paul Cram Creation Award as well as ArtsNS Emerging Artist Award.

In December 2024 she launched her debut recording as leader Living Things on Richmond, Virginia’s Cacophonous Revival Records, a critically acclaimed imprint devoted to various strains of experimental music. The release sees her gathering an all-star cast to perform her compositions, including Canadians Doug Tielli, Nicholas D’Amato, and Nick Fraser, alongside the celebrated reeds player and composer Frank Gratkowski, whom Miller regards as her mentor. The album was nominated for MusicNS Jazz Recording of the Year.

She also appears on acclaimed recordings such as Enrique Luna’s La Luna Ensamble 1 (as featured in Enciclopedia Fonográfica del Jazz en México by Antonio Malacara), Joyfultalk’s Familiar Science (Constellation Recordings) and Jon Mckiel’s HEX (You’ve Changed). Pitchfork praised her contribution to the title track of the latter remarking “it’s the free-floating saxophone that tilts the song just off its axis”. Miller’s compositions have been commissioned by the UpStream Orchestra, an improvising large ensemble founded by the legendary Paul Cram, and the Alkali Collective.

Chris Donnelly – piano

Chris Donnelly is an official Steinway artist, an instructor at the University of Toronto, an associate composer at the Canadian Music Centre, and has been nominated for two Juno Awards. Trained simultaneously as a classical pianist and a jazz pianist, his genre-bending repertoire is an eclectic mix of jazz, ragtime, stride, gospel, improvisation, original compositions and classical music.

In September 2008, Chris released his Juno-nominated, debut album with Alma Records called ‘Solo,’ featuring a blend of original material and arrangements of jazz standards. This also earned him nominations for ‘Best Recording of the Year’ and ‘Best Keyboardist of the Year’ from the 2009 National Jazz Awards.

Chris is a member of Myriad3, a contemporary jazz trio playing mostly original music that features different aspects of jazz improvisation, ensemble performance and contemporary composition. The band has released 5 albums on Alma Records/Universal: Tell (2012); The Where (2014); Tell((Chip)) (2015); Moons (2016); and Vera (2018). The Where was nominated for a Juno Award and a Sirius Radio XM Indie Music Award in 2015.

Chris is also an experienced electronic music producer and sound designer. In 2016, he started “Gruber Music,” an avenue for electronic music and experimentation. He has since released 17+ albums of original electronic music and video game covers, 6+ hours of composition tutorials, and 25,000+ words on jazz piano. Using Ableton Live, MilkyTracker, Pico-8, and Wwise, Chris has contributed music and sound effects to countless video games including Slipways (2021), Traplabs (2018), UnDUNE II (2022), and Dank Tomb (2017). In 2017, Chris joined PEARL lab at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital where they are developing music therapy based technologies and video games for young people with disabilities.

Nicholas D’Amato – bass

Bassist Nicholas D’Amato is a veteran of the New York City music scene. As a sideman, Nicholas has been the propulsion for a vast array of groups spanning all stylistic borders. For the past eight years he has been touring with Lizz Wright, most recently to promote her latest release, “Freedom and Surrender”(Concord). He also performs regularly with Canadian artists Ian Janes, Meaghan Smith, Charlie A’Court, Dinuk Wijeratne, and Geoff Arsenault, among others. He keeps busy recording albums and tracks for some of the world’s finest, as well as television jingles and film scores. Nicholas balances his time on the road with teaching at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he is the bass instructor, and leads classes in improvisation.

Nick Fraser – drums

Nick Fraser has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community since he moved there from Ottawa in 1995. He has worked with a veritable “who’s who” of Canadian jazz and improvised music including Justin Haynes, Mike Murley, Rich Underhill, P.J. Perry, Phil Dwyer, Michael Snow, John Oswald, Andrew Downing, Jean Martin, Christine Duncan, Lina Allemano, Quinsin Nachoff, Dave Restivo, Jim Vivian, David Braid, Ryan Driver, David Occhipinti, William Carn, Nancy Walker, Kieran Overs, Kelly Jefferson, John Geggie, Scott Thomson, Marilyn Lerner, David Mott, Lori Freedman, Jean Derome, Ron Samworth and Kirk MacDonald.

In addition, he has had the opportunity to perform and/or record with such international artists as Tony Malaby, Michael Moore, Bobby Shew, Donny McCaslin, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Jean-Luc Ponty, Bela Fleck, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Wynton Marsalis, David Binney, Steve Turre, Matt Welch, Bill Carrothers and Bill Mays. Nick’s recorded works as a leader include Owls in Daylight (1997), Nick Fraser and Justin Haynes are faking it (2004) and Towns and Villages (2013).

For 10 years, he co-led the co-operative group Drumheller with Brodie West, Rob Clutton, Eric Chenaux and Doug Tielli, who released four critically acclaimed CDs between 2005 and 2013. Other projects that occupy Nick regularly are Ugly Beauties (with Marilyn Lerner and Matt Brubeck), Peripheral Vision, the Lina Allemano Four and Titanium Riot. Nick is a founding member of The Association of Improvising Musicians of Toronto, a non-profit organization dedicated to the Toronto improvising community.

“Fraser not so much plays the drums as hurls himself whole body and soul against skin and metal… truly talented.”

–– Bill Stunt, CBC Radio.

“The young Toronto drummer is perhaps a little too progressive for the hidebound Canadian scene… Fraser is a deft and sensitive percussionist with a hint of an enigmatic streak, a feeling for economical gestures, and an innate sense of form.”

–– Mark Miller, The Globe \& Mail

“Fraser can swing hard when necessary, but he’s equally a colorist with all manner of unusual tricks up his sleeve. Placing cymbals on the drums and pushing on them while striking them created a sound akin to a water gongs. His brushwork was impeccable, asserting time while, at the same time, creating richer texture. His solos were clearly focused on the musical rather than macho displays of dexterity—though in order to do what he does, it’s clear that he possesses all kinds of technical facility.”

–– John Kelman, All About Jazz