There is a reason I wanted to do this story. It began at Hugh’s Room where I was reviewing three amazing guitar players. At the end of the show, I had a chance to speak with them, and this there was this guy standing next to me and was really engaged in a good conversation. I overheard one of the guitarists Adrian Bellue saying he would love to jam with this guy. Another said he would be interested in collaborating with him. “Who is this guy”?

As it turns out, his name is Mathieu Fiset, and he just moved to Toronto a couple of months ago. He is a piano player, composer, producer, overall, in the jazz field. He does a lot of solo work, and his process is to start off on piano and then add drums, because he also plays drums. From there he can add any other instrument that he feels fits the part. Since he doesn’t really play guitar, there is not a lot of that included in his work, unless he invites someone to play for him.

Mathieu would like to say he plays jazz music, but there are so many other elements to how he experiments. There are progressive rock elements, heavy metal elements, fusion elements, world beat music, and the list and ideas go on and on.

He even likes Daft Punk and would try to see if he could add elements of jazz fusion with some elements of world music and see where that goes. His process starts off as just sitting at a piano and improvising until it feels original. From there he would add in the other instruments and that could take months.

Sometimes the improvisations can be the entire song. “Just last week I released a song I did with an African singer, and I did it in one take and then just refined it a bit. Then the last song I did took two years to complete. I did the piano piece, and I knew exactly who I wanted on drums”. It was our homeboy, Larnell Lewis. That took a long time just to get him to do this part. By the time I got all the musicians to do their part that was two years in the making.

What makes a producer a true craftsman is the understanding of what each musician is capable of and giving them the freedom to interpret the song their way. I had the structure, but it is the individual musicians to breathe life into those parts.

I think part of what makes Mathieu an original musician is his journey that finally led him here to Toronto. He was born in Quebec City and lived there until he was 22. He lucked out and got a gig to go out to Asia. It was just a hotel gig that did top 40 kind of music. There was nothing glamorous about that. I just felt lucky that I was being paid to travel for my music.

From there I decided to stay in China for five years.

You have an interesting story about your solo music. What happened?

I did my second solo album in Asia called- Robojazz. That was a flop. Then something happened. An online school called Drumeo based in Victoria B.C. was known for using drum less tracks for teaching purposes. I decided to send them some of my drum less tracks from the Robojazz album. I did this in 2016 and in 2019 one of the drummers I played with just came back from B.C. and told me that they asked Larnell Lewis to play one of your songs and they were going to release it soon.  Then in 2020, when everything went to shit, the video came out called, “Chick’s Pain”. If you look up the video on YouTube it has 167,000 views plus another 12 million views from different platforms. Here is a link to that video- Mathieu Fiset – Chick’s Pain (Larnell Lewis one take drum cover on Drumeo) (youtube.com)

I put out a lot of different albums since 2012 and moved from Canada to Asia and then back to Quebec City and created a band called Robojazz. Again 2020 when everything was shutting down, things had to get shelved. So recently I decided to come to Toronto and start again in a big city. I have been here for only two months.

I just put together a new band with musicians I met on the jazz scene and through open jams. We haven’t even played live yet. I have Daniel Genius on drums. The Bass player is named Mark Decho and on Sax is Rob Christian.

The day I arrived I ended up at the Pilot during the Jazz Festival and began meeting musicians that would become this new band. I also jammed at the Listening Room and Marmalade. The jams took place in Longboat Hall.

Right now, with this new band, I want to get these shows to go well and hopefully move onto to bigger shows and festivals for next year: Toronto and Montreal. At the same time, I love working as a producer: not only for myself but for other artists. I would like to work with more Pop oriented musicians.

Blast Toronto would like to welcome in this monster talent and show him off as he makes his mark in the big city. You can go out and have your minds blown away at these two shows.

The Emmet Ray, 924 College St on Oct 25at 9pm- I have a pair of tickets up for grabs if you go to my contest page.

Drom Taberna at 458 Queen St on Nov 10at 9pm.

A Big Thanks to Wazema Restaurant for letting us use their location for this photoshoot. They are located at 1360 Danforth Ave. If you love Ethiopian Food, this is your place.