Featuring - Caity Gyorgy

Featuring is vocalist Caity Gyorgy's debut full-length album, released on La Reserve Records on November 4, 2022. The Calgary-born, Montreal-based singer — a graduate of McGill University's jazz performance program — wrote ten of the album's thirteen tracks, mixing her originals with three standards including Rodgers and Hammerstein's "It Might as Well Be Spring" and "'Tis Autumn." Gyorgy's songwriting draws on bebop and swing traditions while incorporating contemporary lyrics, creating original compositions that sit naturally alongside the standards in the program. The album features a large cast of Canadian jazz musicians across its tracks, including saxophonists Allison Au, Christine Jensen, Pat LaBarbera, and Daniel Barta, guitarist Jocelyn Gould, trumpeter Kyle Pogline, clarinetist Virginia MacDonald, pianist Felix Fox-Pappas, bassist Thomas Hainbuch, and drummer Jacob Wutzke. The varying instrumental combinations across tracks give the album a revue-like quality — as the title suggests, each tune spotlights different guest collaborators. Gyorgy's voice is warm and rhythmically precise, with a natural swing feel and clear bebop influence in her phrasing. The album won the 2023 Juno Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year, establishing Gyorgy as one of the most promising young jazz vocalists in Canada and drawing comparisons to earlier generations of singer-composers who balanced original material with the standard repertoire.