Veteran music & arts presenter Northern Lights Festival Boréal is proud to partner with Sudbury, ON’s newest concert venue Knox Hall to present one of Canada’s most skilled and inventive guitarists, Don Ross. On April 5th, Don Ross will perform live at Knox Hall’s newly renovated concert hall at 73 Larch St. in downtown Sudbury. Joining him for an exciting double-bill will be a rising fingerstyle guitar talent from Osaka, Japan, Kent Nishimura. Doors are at 7pm, the show begins at 8pm. Tickets are $30 in advance, and $35 at the door – now available at www.nlfb.ca/tickets.
DON ROSS: https://donrossonline.com/
Don Ross has just released a new solo album, WATER. It is his 18th solo album, and his 21st including collaborations. For this new recording, Don decided to launch a Kickstarter fundraising campaign and do the release 100% independently. He managed to raise his financial goal in 28 hours, and was able to make many musical concepts come true as a result. The album features collaborations with legendary guitarist/songwriter Bruce Cockburn, fretless bass wizard Michael Manring, Washington State-based guitarist/composer Sean Hall, singer/guitarist Brooke Miller, Prince Edward Island-based quintet The Atlantic String Machine, and even one piece with the 70-piece City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The album features cover art by luminary Mi’kmaw visual artist Alan Syliboy of Millbrook First Nation in Nova Scotia.
Don Ross was born and raised in Montreal and has lived in various parts of Canada over the course of his life. The son of a Mi’kmaw Indigenous mother and a Scottish immigrant father, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Music) degree from Toronto’s York University and started working full-time as a musician in 1988.
In 2021, Don won the prestigious Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. Don currently lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
KENT NISHIMURA: https://www.kentnishimura.online/en
Kent Nishimura was born in Osaka, Japan on March 1, 2003. When he was five years old, after mentioning that he wanted a guitar of his own, his parents gave him an acoustic guitar for Christmas. With guitar in hand, he began to play and sing along to Japanese rock and pop hits. It was around this time that he happened to hear a tune by Kotaro Oshio (a superstar
in the Japanese fingerstyle guitar music scene), which prompted him to declare to his family, “I will perform as an acoustic guitarist from now on!!”—although Kent doesn’t remember this at all. When Kent was about ten years old, people began to hear that there was this young kid living in Osaka (named Kent Nishimura) who was able to play the guitar very well, and he began to get offers to perform at numerous music events in the Osaka area.
At age twelve, Kent released his debut album First Step on Slice of Life Records. In April 2017, at age fourteen, Kent entered Japan’s premiere fingerstyle guitar competition, the 17th Annual Fingerpicking Day 2017, and finished as the youngest grand champion in the history of the competition. Following this up, Kent released his second solo album entitled 2 in May of 2017, which included thirteen original arrangements (mostly of hit songs from the 1970s) and one original composition, “Desert Island. Since 2019, Kent has received various offers from several booking agencies in Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Canada to perform solo or as a special guest. He’s been interviewed by Acoustic Guitar Magazine (Rittor Music), Acoustic Guitar Book (Shinko Music), and AKUSTIK GITARRE (a major guitar publication in Germany). Kent’s most recent album is entitled Fingerstyle Solo Guitar Songs.
