Tom Keenlyside

Tom Keenlyside was born and raised in Vancouver, He took up the trumpet in 1962 at the age of 12, and played in various rhythm and blues bands throughout the 1960s. He started to play the flute at the age of 15. Keenlyside earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music (Flute Major) from the University of British Columbia before embarking on an extensive tours and recording collaborations with popular rock artists Prism and Bachman- Turner Overdrive (BTO). He was invited to perform and record with such acts as Alice Cooper and Styx. By the1970s he added the flute, valve trombone and saxophone. He toured and recorded with rockers Prism and BTO and performed in double-bills with Alice Cooper,and Styx. A founding member of the jazz-fusion group Skywalk and toured with the Tom Keenlyside Quintet, Keenlyside co-founded the band Skywalk in the early 1980s which produced five albums for MCA, which took the band on two major U.S. tours. In the 1980s, Keenlyside also toured Canada with the Tom Keenlyside Quintet. He continued to hone his craft working with Harry Connick Jr. and Diana Krall, and recording with The Barenaked Ladies and Jim Byrnes (for which Keenlyside earned a Juno Award for production on That River). A current project is a popular jazz quartet, Altered Laws, founded with celebrated pianist, Miles Black. Keenlyside and Black are currently writing new material for the quartet’s next round of production to accompany well received albums The Outsiders and Live at the Cellar (both released 2005).