Toronto Jazz Festival 2026

Duck Society is a nine-piece Toronto jazz-fusion collective — horns, keys, guitar, bass and percussion — playing all-original music that folds funk, soul and hip-hop into modern jazz. Featured through the festival's “Jazz Up Next” program for emerging Greater Toronto Area artists, the band brought its floor-filling set to the OLG Village stage.

Toronto's Maya Killtron — a classically trained violinist who blends funk, jazz, pop, disco and roller boogie — opened for French-Lebanese trumpet star Ibrahim Maalouf at the Danforth Music Hall during the 2026 Toronto Jazz Festival. A longtime backup vocalist and touring musician for Juno, Polaris and Grammy winners, she headed her own set here, moving between bowed electric violin and full-voiced vocals in front of a sold-out room.

Toronto trumpeter and flugelhornist Joseph Funk brought his trio to the Toronto Jazz Festival's Sidewalk Sessions in Bloor-Yorkville, playing an open-air set of trumpet, upright bass and drums a few steps from the Royal Ontario Museum's crystal at Avenue Road and Bloor Street. A University of Toronto graduate and 2025 Toronto Undergraduate Jazz Festival Artist of the Year, Funk turned a downtown street corner into a stage for passersby.