A man, a plan, a band Tribute to composer Ron Paley pays homage to local jazz leader who’s never wavered By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 4:14 PM CDT Wednesday, May. 20, 2026

When asked how he kept his big band together for so many years, Duke Ellington famously replied, “You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money.”

While the remark was made half in jest, it strikes at a central truth: big bands, like orchestras, employ a lot of people and can be central economic drivers for jazz scenes.

All the more important, then, to have a leader like Ron Paley, who also inspires loyalty and admiration.

The nationally celebrated 75-year-old performer, composer, arranger and band leader is celebrated at a tribute concert this Saturday.

It features a who’s who of the local jazz scene — including pianist Will Bonness, trumpeter Jeff Johnson and vocalist/event co-organizer Jennifer Hanson — serving up Paley’s originals and signature arrangements, along with favourites from the big band songbook.

Not just a coda for Ron Paley’s big band, the concert reunites generations of Winnipeg musicians who played in his band, collaborated with him and learned from him.

“This musical icon of Winnipeg… had weekly rehearsals that probably went on for about 40 years on Thursdays. People attended those rehearsals out of the love of just playing through music,” says jazz saxophonist and event co-organizer Brian Klowak.

“His influence was so positive, just in terms of player development and keeping jazz and big band going in the city,” adds Richard Gillis, a longtime Paley collaborator and member of the University of Manitoba’s Desautels Faculty of Music. “He wasn’t building a mansion and socking away the funds. He was hiring people.”

Paley grew up in Winnipeg, and earned a bachelor of music from the University of Manitoba in 1972. And while he’s spent the past few decades here, working steadily as a jazz pianist as well as band leader, he cut his teeth musically abroad as an electric bassist with some of big band’s biggest brands, including Woody Herman and Buddy Rich.

“After I left (Winnipeg), I went to Berklee College in Boston, then I got the call to go on the road with Buddy Rich’s band… it had a huge impact on me,” Paley says.

Bass and drums have a special relationship; the rest of the band listens most closely to them for the groove. And in this case, Paley was having to lock in, night after night, with one of the world’s greatest drummers, Rich — who was his boss to boot. It was a lot of pressure.

“Buddy’s band was hired to play with Frank Sinatra, and I played one song every night, and then I didn’t — I got to listen from a few feet away, and that was incredible,” Paley recalls.

That wasn’t his last time working with Ol’ Blue Eyes. A few years later, as a member of Woody Herman’s band, he lent his grooves to The Main Event with Frank Sinatra in 1974; also one of three albums recorded with the world-famous clarinettist, saxophonist, singer and big band leader Herman.

Paley, then barely in his mid-20s, wasn’t just experienced beyond his years but something of an old soul.

By the 1970s and 1980s, big band had long been eclipsed as the dominant mode not only of pop but also jazz music, overtaken by genres like fusion, free jazz and smooth jazz. Paley stuck to his musical guns.

“At one time, in the late 1930s or early 1940s, there were hundreds of big bands playing shows and dances, but after a period of time it was thinning out … that’s what makes Ron unique, because there were just a few people like him across Canada that were able to keep big band going,” Gillis says.

Ron’s persistence was met with good fortune.

By the 1990s, as Paley was in the thick of lifting up Winnipeg’s big band scene, the so-called “swing revival” was in full swing — remember Jim Carrey’s The Mask, Jon Favreau’s Swingers and a barrage of commercials from The Gap and others featuring SoCal act Big Bad Voodoo Daddy?

At the same time, international jazz was undergoing something of a traditionalist turn — thanks to the influence of musicians like trumpeter Wynton Marsalis — giving further legitimacy to the reassembly of big bands.

Despite this timing, Paley’s “stubborness” with the genre doesn’t seem calculated. He seems almost indifferent to how popular culture’s ebbs and flows have carried big band in and out of the mainstream.

“I don’t remember (big band) ever leaving,” he says. “It was always part of my life, and it’s always been there.”

In Canada, Paley recorded a half dozen or so albums, wrote and arranged reams of music for big band and symphony orchestra, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Royal Winnipeg Ballet for such projects as A Cinderella Story, and organized hundreds of concerts.

He’s also noted by his peers for his eclecticism as a player — for the range of his chops across styles.

“He never stopped learning,” says Klowak. “(He was) comfortable in almost any situation… from standards to free jazz.”

But when asked to reflect his legacy, without hesitating, he quotes a song of his: “There ain’t nothing like a big band.”

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