Venue: La Zone (8815 Parc, #303, Montréal, QC H2N 1X9) Date: October 4, 2026 Doors: 8:00 PM Music: 8:30 PM
Tickets: $20
Advance Tickets: TBC
Facebook Event: TBC
Presented by Everyday Ago.
Caroline Davis is a Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer, and activist, whose work is driven by a desire for connection and a belief in music’s capacity to expand listeners’ ears, minds, and hearts. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition, she is the recipient of the DownBeat Critics Poll Alto Saxophone Rising Star Award, as well as fellowships from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Chamber Music America, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her residencies include MacDowell, The Jazz Gallery, Civitella, and the Rockefeller Estate, and she has served as a mentor for New Music USA’s Next Jazz Legacy program.
Davis’s work spans a wide range of creative contexts, rooted in improvisation and social inquiry. She has released eight albums as a leader and collaborated with artists such as Allison Miller, Lee Konitz, John Zorn, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Miles Okazaki, Nicole Mitchell, Rajna Swaminathan, and Matt Mitchell. Her most recent release, Portals, explores themes of grief and memory, and she is also a contributor to Terri Lyne Carrington’s New Standards, a landmark collection of jazz compositions by female-identifying composers.
In addition to her work as a performer and composer, Davis is a dedicated educator, teaching courses on gender in jazz at The New School and maintaining a private studio at the Manhattan School of Music. Her artistic practice is deeply intertwined with advocacy, including work for gender equity through This Is A Movement, and for current and formerly incarcerated individuals through initiatives such as Justice for Keith LaMar, Freer Records, Keys Beats Bars, and Creative Beyond Incarceration.
Helen Gillet is a singer-songwriter and surrealist-archeologist exploring synthesized sounds, texture, and rhythm using an acoustic cello. Gillet is the recipient of the Doris Duke Performance Award, New Orleans Best Contemporary Jazz and best Female Performer from Gambit Best of The Beat awards and Offbeat Magazine’s Best “Other Instrumentalist” and “Mixed Bag” music and twice for Rising Star in Downbeat Magazine’s Critic Poll.
Gillet was born in Belgium, raised in Singapore for 9 years as a child. Over the past 23 years, living in New Orleans she has played with musicians of all stripes, from avant-garde jazz and classical to pop and funk — Gillet has developed a singular polyglot style. The core of her work is solo performance with live looping, layering cello parts and vocal lines. Rhythmic figures emerge with bowed or plucked ostinatos or a variety of rubbing and slapping on the body of the cello, then enhanced with melodies played or sung in her haunting alto.
Gillet’s solo performance with “My Pal Foot Foot” is known for its enigmatic quality as she fabricates each song with innovative use of the cello and true mastery of live looping technology. She has performing in festivals across Europe, Australia, and The United States as a solo musician, collaborator and educator. Gillet has recorded for countless musicians throughout her career and has self published 14 albums of her own original music ranging from progressive jazz, electro folk rock and punk bands and solo singer-songwriting albums. Her latest album is called “ReBelle” a Tribute to Belgian folk singer Julos Beaucarne and features a quintet of New Orleans musicians.