Trumpeter Kae Murphy is the winner of the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Jazz Artist Award in 2023.
Supported by Cheryl and Manuel Buchwald, the award comes with a $10,000 cash prize to help further the recording career of an outstanding emerging jazz artist.
The winner was announced Tuesday night at the TD Toronto Jazz Festival.
Hailing from Owen Sound, Ont., and now based in Toronto, Murphy has studied at the University of Toronto, the New School, the Banff Centre, and the School of Improvisational Music. They have performed internationally with artists such as BADBADNOTGOOD, Whitney, Donny McCaslin, and Maria Schneider.
“To me, this music is creativity in the purest form,” Murphy said in a statement to the Toronto Arts Foundation. “There doesn’t have to be any limits on any aspect of improvisation, meaning that one can be free to explore and push further in any aspect within the music. This inspires me on a daily basis.”
This year’s other two finalists were guitarist Julien Bradley-Combs and trumpeter Madeleine Ertel. They each receive a $1,000 cash prize.
The Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Jazz Artist Award was established in 2014 to further the career of an outstanding emerging jazz artist. It is intended to support the pre-production, production, and/or recording of original music composed by the recipient.
The panelists who helped assess applications for the 2023 award were multi-instrumentalist Waleed Abdulhamid, saxophonist Allison Au, guitarist Andrew Scott, and the TD Toronto Jazz Festival’s artistic director Josh Grossman.
