Mark Miller, jazz writer and former jazz critic for The Globe and Mail.

Fern Lindzon’s eclectic interests, her skill and her versatility as a pianist, singer, composer and arranger have made her a vital and valued member of the Toronto music community, both with her own jazz ensembles and in klezmer and other World Music settings.

From an early and extensive background in classical music, and through studies over the years with vocalists Elaine Overholt and Neil Semer and with jazz pianists Don Thompson, Frank Falco, Marilyn Lerner, and master classes with Fred Hersch and Barry Harris, she has moved freely into, and now comfortably beyond, contemporary jazz.

Her debut CD, Moments Like These (2008), which found her in duets with Don Thompson (vibraphone), Reg Schwager (guitar) and George Koller (bass), received considerable radio play across Canada and brought her praise from the Canadian jazz critics Mark Miller, Len Dobbin (Montreal Mirror), Jim Galloway (The WholeNote) and Marke Andrews (Vancouver Sun), as well as the American author Scott Yanow (The Jazz Singers: The Ultimate Guide). She was the subject of a feature article by Michael Posner in The Globe & Mail.

Fern’s second CD, Two Kites (2011), with George Koller, saxophonist Mike Murley and drummer Nick Fraser, again reflects clearly her range as a musician — from the Brazilian lilt of the title song (by Antonio Carlos Jobim) and the Portuguese lyrics of Ate Quem Sabe to the Yiddish traditions of her suite of Yam Lid, Lustige Chasidm and Balkan Bellabusta, and on again to the standard jazz stylings of My Romance and Basin Street Blues and the contemporary jazz leanings of Distance and Dona Dona. The CD will be launched at Lula Lounge in April 2011, an event that has been selected, by jury, to receive the promotional support of the TD Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival as one of the festival’s Special Projects initiatives.

Fern has appeared in recent years with her jazz ensemble at the Montreal Bistro, Old Mill Homesmith Bar, Chalkers, the Rex, Trane Studio, Reservoir Lounge, in cabaret shows at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts and at the Toronto, Markham, Distillery, Barrie and Burlington jazz festivals. Further afield, she has led trios at the Cellar in Vancouver and Hermann’s Jazz Club in Victoria. Her quartet was recorded in 2009 for CBC Radio’s Canada Live, and Fern herself is the subject of a profile, currently in preparation, for Bravo TV’s Arts and Minds.

In 2009 Fern received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to explore the fusion of Yiddish music and contemporary jazz, and in September 2010 she led a klezmer/jazz sextet to particular acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Bell Lightbox Theatre in four performances of her original score for Buster Keaton’s silent film classic, Sherlock Jr. Her next major project, Forgotten Melodies, which infuses jazz with klezmer/Eastern European, Yiddish and classical, will have its debut in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre for the Arts in March 2011.

Fern is a member of Toronto’s award-winning Sisters of Sheynville (“Vocal Group of the Year,” 2008 Canadian Folk Music Awards), an all-women sextet that has performed at klezmer and Jewish music festivals throughout Canada and in the United States. She was a featured soloist in David Buchbinder’s Jerusalem Salon at the Canwest Cabaret Festival in 2008 and has collaborated with many other jazz and klezmer musicians in club and concert performances.

Fern’s involvement in the Toronto music community is further reflected in her work at Havergal College, where she directs the jazz choir and teaches piano, and in her place on the advisory board of the Jazz Performance and Education Centre.