Canadian composer, artist/musician, bassist, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, music educator, arranger, music producer, sound engineer, sound designer, and samplist, Sage Reynolds, works from Ottawa & Montréal doing projects in a variety of musical styles and contexts, including jazz, folk, indie folk/rock, country, world music, r&b, hip hop, cinematic music, media composition, sound design (including for theatre), and others.
Sage has performed on both national and international stages and has performed and/or recorded with a multitude of groups/artists (see CV for highlights), including Life in Winter, Sage Reynolds Quartet, Thomas Hellman, Jordan Officer, Sage Reynolds- The Long Drift, Emilie Clepper, Andrea Lindsay, Notre Dame de Grass, Alejandra Ribera, Sussex/Rob Lutes, Katie Moore & Andrew Horton, Li’l Andy, Joe Grass, Courtney Wing, Matt Lipscombe, Julian Brown, Jade McNelis, Stars, Land of Talk, Sarah Neufeld, Amon Tobin, Ismail Fencioglu, Shtreiml, Kaba Horo, Sean Craig, Gabriel Lambert, André Leroux, François Bourassa, Peter Hum, Ed Lister, Richard Page, Petr Cancura, Dave Smith, Darcy James Argue, Rebecca Noelle, Matt Chaffey, Ben Di Millo, Mark Ferguson, Garry Elliot, Steve Boudreau, Michel Delage, Mike Essoudry, Lonesome Paul, Guy Bélanger, Rick Haworth, Rita Chiarelli, Dan Livingstone, Howard Levy, Bella Fleck, Rodney Brown, Damon Dowbak, Kim Erickson, Sienna Dahlen, Andrea Revel, and Dawn Tyler Watson. Other music activities include his composition projects, regular freelance gigging, and studio session work for albums/EPs/singles and film/TV, including remote sessions from his home studio (see Discography for examples).
Sage composes/performs music for theatre & dance and has started composing for film & television, including scoring the 2024 short film Bye Bye Grandma by Roula Ragheb. Lately, he has been involved in various media composition projects and has started collaborating with other film composers. Sage is open to all types of projects/collaborations in the media composition world, such as scoring to picture and composing for games. One recent standout project involved sound-design, composition, and live performance for the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Ottawa production of Jill Connell’s play The Supine Cobbler (Fall 2023, directed by Emily Pearlman).
In March of 2007 Sage founded the indie folk/rock band Life in Winter in which he is the primary songwriter, as well as lead vocalist, bassist, and rhythm guitarist. Life in Winter has played many shows in Montréal (including dates at POP Montréal), a couple of shows in Toronto (including at the Horseshoe Tavern), and has recorded their material with such engineers as Marcus Paquin (The National, Stars, Little Scream, Arcade Fire, Sarah Harmer), Vid Cousins (Amon Tobin, Moondata), George Massenburg (Beck, Toto, Frank Sinatra, Journey), Olaf Gundel (Thomas Hellman, West Trainz, Bïa), and Pierre Girard (Thus Owls, Anique Granger, Daniel Bélanger, Karkwa, Louis-Jean Cormier). Past members have included: Sheenah Ko, Rich White, Eric Couture-Telmosse, Liam Killen, Gabriel Lambert, Ben Shemie, Eric Thibodeau, and Christian Olsen. In 2011/13 Sage received Research and Creation grants for this project from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). Life in Winter’s self-titled debut album was released October 29, 2012 (independent, personnel: Sage Reynolds, Rich White, Brad Barr, Andrew Barr, Laurel Sprengelmeyer, Marcus Paquin, Gabriel Lambert) and two of its songs (Lone Rider & Wood Fire) received extensive airplay on Montréal’s CHOM 97.7 FM. Sage is currently releasing an EP recording project for Life in Winter and has started an acoustic indie folk songwriting project under his own name.
Sage was awarded the “Prix Étoiles Galaxie de Radio-Canada” at the 2005 Montréal International Jazz Festival for his compositions Saturday Afternoon and On the Wall. In October 2005 his quartet opened for John Scofield at the famous Spectrum. Sage Reynolds Quartet played a second and third concert at the MIJF in 2006 & 2008 and performed at both the Ottawa International Jazz Festival and l’OFF Festival de Jazz de Montréal in June of 2007. On the Wall, Sage’s first full length CD as a composer, bandleader, and producer, was released in September of 2006 on Effendi Records (FND067, Montréal, QC).
Besides the above mentioned CALQ grants, other distinctions include two creation grants as lead artist/applicant from The Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), a songwriting project funded by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC, with Lynn Miles as a coach), several other grant projects as a participant artist (CALQ, CCA, Musicaction, other organizations), and double bass, co-composition, and bandleading for the Félix award winning jazz album Entre le jazz et la java, by Andrea Lindsay (2017, ADISQ).
In addition to his work in Eastern Ontario & Québec, Sage has performed elsewhere within Canada’s borders, including concerts and festival appearances in Toronto (including NXNE & Planet IndigenUS), Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Red Rock (Live from the Rock Folk Festival), Owen Sound (Summerfolk Music Festival), Winnipeg Folk Festival, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. He has performed internationally in locations such as Alaska, Central America, South & Southeast Asia, New York, NY, Merida, Mexico (at the 2005 Merida Jazz Festival Internacional), Austin, Texas (at the 2006 Folk Alliance conference), and Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain).
Two of Sage’s main collaborative projects during the 2010s were with Thomas Hellman and Jordan Officer. With each artist he completed several recording projects (including composing the string arrangements and collaborating for the vocal/instrumental arrangements (with Olaf Gundel and Thomas Hellman) on Thomas’ latest album), staged multiple shows (often with stage direction by Brigitte Haentjens), and toured extensively in Québec, Ontario, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy (over 150 shows to date for Thomas’ Rêves américains). Besides working with each bandleader, these projects gave Sage the opportunity to collaborate and perform with two other excellent musicians: Olaf Gundel (with Thomas Hellman) and Alain Bergé (with Jordan Officer).
As an educator, Sage’s activities include Private Study instruction at Concordia University (since 2009) and the independent instruction of other private students (double bass, bass, music theory, composition, arranging, production, sound design). Sage was a jazz combo coach at The McGill Conservatory of Music from 2004 up until its closing in 2022.
Much of Sage’s musical training occurred while completing his Bachelor of Music Degree, Majoring in Jazz Performance (double bass), at McGill University (2000), where he studied composition & arranging with Jan Jarczyk, Kevin Dean, Joe Sullivan, & Christopher Smith. Other training has included several years of private study (w/ Jordan O’Connor, Michel Donato, Alec Walkington, and others) as well as participation in numerous masterclasses and seminars, including bass masterclasses (Mark Dresser, Drew Gress, Larry Grenadier, Dave Holland, Dezron Douglas) and participation in The International Jazz Workshop at The Banff Centre for the Arts (1999), where he played and studied with Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano, Dave Holland, and Kenny Werner, amongst others. This workshop included the exploration of many different approaches to composition, including serialism, the use of multiple metres & time signatures, and writing using improvisation.
More recently (2021-2022, 2025), Sage participated in coaching sessions for songwriting, marimba performance, orchestration, and composition (particularly for string quartet), with some of Montréal and Ottawa’s most talented artists (Katie Moore, Joe Grass, Alexander Haupt, Benoit Groulx, Richard Reed Parry, Keiko Devaux, Lynn Miles). Self-produced professional demos of Sage’s folk songs (with Olaf Gundel & Sheenah Ko) and string quartet music (with Quatuor Bozzini, engineered by Marcus Paquin at Studio Pierre Marchand) were recorded in November 2021 and June 2022, respectively. These activities were made possible thanks to the CCA.