Album Notes

Rebecca Jenkins, one of Canada’s most beloved and accomplished actresses, returns to her jazz roots with the release of a new CD of jazz standards, Blue Skies. With Blue Skies Jenkins brings her pure and soulful voice, and her original phrasing and interpretations, to twelve jazz standards, backed by musicians, Alan Matheson (trumpet), Joel Bakan (guitar), and Liam MacDonald (drums and percussion). Blue Skies was independently co-produced by Jenkins with Bakan (writer of The Corporation book and film).

Jenkins burst onto the Canadian film scene with her best actress Genie Award-winning performance as a 1940s jazz singer in Anne Wheeler's Bye Bye Blues (the soundtrack was released by Warner Bros. as an album). Her soulful and charismatic singing and acting in that film launched a career that has included numerous critically-acclaimed and award-winning roles in Canadian and American film and television. Among other things, she played the lead in the CBC series Black Harbour, starred alongside Oscar winners Tim Robbins (Bob Roberts) and Kevin Spacey (Darrow), and played lead roles in several recent feature films written and/or directed by Daniel MacIvor (Past Perfect, Marion Bridge, Wilby Wonderful, Whole New Thing).

As a singer, Jenkins toured and recorded as back-up vocalist with the Parachute Club and Jane Siberry. Over the years she has performed original and other material, including the jazz repertoire, in front of symphony orchestras, on radio shows (among other things, she co-hosted and performed songs on CBC Radio’s Quiet There’s a Lady On Stage, broadcast from the Glenn Gould theatre), at music festivals, on compilation albums (such as Bruce Cockburn’s Kick at the Darkness), at clubs and concert halls, and for film and television soundtracks.

Her original song Something’s Coming, which she performed on the feature film Wilby Wonderful soundtrack, was nominated for a Genie Award for best original song. She also co-wrote and performed, with Aaron Davis, the title track to The Sunrise, a television adaptation of a Margaret Atwood short story, in which she starred and was nominated for a Gemini Award.