Irene Louise Rosnes (born 24 March 1962), known professionally as Renee Rosnes (/ˈriːniˈrɒsnɛs/REE-nee ROSS-ness), is a Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.
She went on to the University of Toronto, and studied classical performance with pianist William Aide. In 1985, Rosnes was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts grant, and moved to New York City to continue her studies.[3]
Career
Shortly after arriving in New York, Rosnes became the pianist for the Blue Note Records label band, Out of the Blue, and recorded the 1989 album "Spiral Staircase" with the band. After tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson hired her to play with his quartet in 1986, Rosnes began an international career. In 1988, she was a member of the Wayne Shorter Band and in 1989, she joined trombonist J. J. Johnson's Quintet and remained his pianist of choice until he retired in 1997. In 1989, she also began working with tenor saxophonist James Moody and was the pianist in his quartet for the next 20 years. Rosnes frequently performed with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, and recorded For Sentimental Reasons with his quartet in 2007. She was a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective, and played with the octet from 2004 through 2009. Since 2011, she has been a member of bassist Ron Carter's Foursight Band, which tours frequently in Europe.[4]
In 2023, Rosnes won her seventh Canadian Juno Award for Solo Jazz Album of the Year for Kinds of LoveSmoke Sessions Records, recorded with Chris Potter on tenor, soprano saxes and flute, Christian McBride on bass, and Carl Allen on drums and Rogerio Boccato on percussion. She made four Japanese trio recordings for the VideoArts label with The Drummonds with ex-husband Billy Drummond and the unrelated Ray Drummond on bass. She married jazz pianist Bill Charlap on 25 August 2007, and the couple released a piano duet recording titled Double Portrait (Blue Note).[5]
Rosnes was the host of Jazz Profiles, a CBC Radio show in which she profiled Canadian jazz musicians. Guests included pianists Paul Bley, Joe Sealy and Oliver Jones, bassists Don Thompson and Michel Donato, trumpeters Guido Basso and Kenny Wheeler, and drummer Terry Clarke.[6] With producer Kelly Peterson[7] Rosnes is a co-founder of the Canadian Jazz Master Awards[8] and was the artistic director of the Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival, which took place in Ontario, Canada.[9] Rosnes is the founder, pianist and musical director of the all-female quintet Artemis[ja].[10] The other members are Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Nicole Glover (tenor sax), Noriko Ueda (bass), Allison Miller (drums). The group signed with the Blue Note label, and their eponymously titled debut album was released on 11 September 2020.[11][12] Artemis has been voted Jazz Group of the Year for three consecutive years by Downbeat magazine’s Annual Readers Poll (2023-2025) and was awarded Mid-Size Ensemble of the Year in 2024 and 2025 by the Jazz Journalists Association.
Awards and honours
Hugh Fraser (musician)'s tribute composition Irenerosnesity was recorded by The Hugh Fraser Quintet on their album Looking Up (CBC Records 1988)[13] and performed by them at the Montreal Jazz Festival (1988)[14]
