Kaya 959

But I'm very grateful for that experience, you know, and Toronto is a place that, you know, that I call home for about eight years. You know, I was there, like you mentioned, performing, studying, collaborating with a lot of different people, teaching. I eventually taught at the same school that I went to, Hamburg College. And it was an incredible, incredible opportunity. My last.

The last semester that I went to school in Toronto at the Hamburg College, I was selected by Oscar Peterson to be the first recipient of the Oscar Peterson Award. And that was an incredible honor. I got to meet Oscar Peterson, I got to meet already Barry Harris, who was one of my mentors and someone that was very important in my musical upbringing, Stanley Cowell, all these different people.

And I'm just so, you know, just looking in retrospect, I'm just so grateful for that kind of experience. And I think that that kind of experience is actually what gave me the little push to, you know, to eventually make the move to New York. Because I always felt like in New York there were a lot of an incredible concentration.

Of musicians. Right. Yeah, making music that I felt like I wanted to be involved with. So I try to prepare myself as much as possible, you know, musically, as much as I could anyway, on my own, and then also by playing with people and by, like I said, asking a lot of questions, studying, getting ready. And then came the opportunity to move to New York.

Thanks to a Canada council grant that allowed me to study with him. So sorry about that. You know, we're just having that kind of a day. But, you know, there was the beautiful conversation with David Farelis. I hope I got a great opportunity to introduce you to his work and his music and his thoughts. And I think it's a vast territory we can cover around his work. He's been everywhere, he's worked with everyone, he's been also pushed up by a lot of important names in the industry.