The Artistry of… Allison Au

“Canada has found a new jazz ambassador,” says Lance Liddle of Bebop Spoken Here. Allison is as quintessentially Canadian as the country’s fabric demands in its definition. Her parents are Chinese and Jewish, and she grew up in the multicultural Canadian jewel of a city, Toronto — a city rich in its cultures and the rhythms of its organic blends of the arts. Grow up in all of this and you cannot but help to be steeped in it all or be part of its tightly woven tapestry. Au’s website bio speaks of “a mosaic of influences” and a sound that blends many music traditions including jazz, classical, pop, R&B, hip hop, Latin and world music. That list is as dynamically and excitingly Toronto, Canada, and it is Allison Au.