Anthony D’Alessandro

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada Birthplace

www.anthonydalessandro.ca Website

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About

Anthony D'Alessandro is a Toronto-based jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader recognized as one of Canada's most promising jazz voices. He holds a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Piano Performance from the University of Toronto and studied with pianist Mike LeDonne in New York City. His 2024 debut album Searchin', featuring trumpeter Benny Benack III, bassist Neil Swainson, and drummer Ernesto Cervini, received widespread critical acclaim, with Jersey Jazz Magazine calling it "a gem of an album." His sophomore release City Lights (2025), a suite for sextet featuring Summer Camargo and Jacob Chung, earned a 2026 JUNO Award nomination for Jazz Album of the Year. D'Alessandro has performed at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Birdland and Smalls in New York City, and venues across South America and Europe. He is also the pianist in two-time JUNO Award-winning vocalist Caity Gyorgy's touring quartet.

Trivia

D'Alessandro's parents originally enrolled him in Italian language classes at age three, but when he resisted, they decided he should study piano instead, believing that if he would not learn a conventional language, he should pursue music as an alternative form of expression. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he created Perceptions, a multimedia project pairing his original solo piano compositions with visual artworks by four Canadian artists, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Early Life

Anthony D'Alessandro was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, around 1997 or 1998, to a family of Italian-Canadian heritage. His formal piano education began at age three, after his parents pivoted from their original plan of Italian language lessons when the young D'Alessandro resisted attending class. He spent his childhood and early adolescence in rigorous classical piano training, studying the works of Chopin and Rachmaninoff. As a teenager, he grew restless with the lengthy preparation periods classical music demanded and discovered jazz, drawn to the immediacy of improvisation and the influence of Oscar Peterson's sense of swing. He enrolled at the University of Toronto, where he studied jazz piano performance under David Braid, Mark Eisenman, and David Restivo, graduating in 2019. He then moved to New York City for about a year to study with pianist and organist Mike LeDonne before returning to Toronto.