Sick Boss 

Peggy Lee · cello
Josh Zubot · violin
JP Carter · trumpet
Dan Gaucher · drums
James Meger · bass
Cole Schmidt · guitar

Sick Boss is an improvising chamber jazz ensemble and Vancouver-based collective. With inspirations going from experimental, improvised, avant-garde and jazz to rock, punk and electronic music, SICK BOSS has established a sound that is immediately recognizable. The band explores episodic compositions that continually move. Through improvised sections, listeners are brought to the next composed section that highlights a new aspect of the ensemble.

Sick Boss self-titled debut album was released in 2017 on DripAudio; it was named among the top albums of 2017 in Vancouver’s The Georgia Straight. The band performed at festivals in Canada and Europe, such as Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), JazzTopad (Poland), and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Together, Sick Boss members also represent years of experience from Vancouver’s creative music scene, as performers, improvisers and composers. Individually, they have collaborated with Mary Margaret O’Hara, Destroyer, Dan Mangan, Gordon Grdina, Jesse Zubot, Marin Patenaude,  Pugs & Crows, Dave Douglas, Sam Shalabi, Ingrid Jensen, Mats Gustafsson, Lisa Cay Miller’s NOW Orchestra, Tony Wilson, Chad VanGaalen, and many more.

As a full band, Sick Boss performs composed and improvised music. In smaller and in collaborative formations, they perform mainly improvised music.

In the summer of 2021, the band came together to record three albums worth of music, now in final production. Working from a song book started immediately after the band’s 2017 debut, six musicians spent six days at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver B.C. The 18 pieces of music are to be released as a triptych.