Biography
Nick Fraser (drums) has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years. He has performed with a veritable "who's who" of Canadian jazz and improvised music and with such international artists as Tony Malaby, Kris Davis, William Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Braxton, Donny McCaslin, and David Binney. A JUNO award winner, he was also awarded a 2017 Chalmers Arts Fellowship.
Nick's recorded works as a leader include Owls in Daylight (1997), Nick Fraser and Justin Haynes are faking it (2004), Towns and Villages (2013), Too Many Continents (2015), Starer (2016), Is Life Long? (2017) and Zoning (2019). For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller, who released four critically acclaimed recordings. Other projects that occupy him regularly are Peripheral Vision, Eucalyptus, Titanium Riot, The Brodie West Quintet, Ugly Beauties (with Marilyn Lerner and Matt Brubeck), and the Lina Allemano Four. Nick has performed on over 80 commercially released recordings. Recently, he has worked with the Calgary-based Decidedly Jazz Danceworks as musical director for their productions of Juliet & Romeo (2017) and Mimic (2018).
"Fraser not so much plays the drums as hurls himself whole body and soul against skin and metal... truly talented." - Bill Stunt, CBC Radio
"Fraser is a deft and sensitive percussionist with a hint of an enigmatic streak, a feeling for economical gestures, and an innate sense of form." - Mark Miller, The Globe & Mail