The dawn of Dusk
Young Jazz Singer helps make the genre cool again
Jen Zoratti



You have to love it when a charming jazz crooner reaffirms your faith in chivalry.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Matt Dusk says, truly apologetic for being exactly two minutes tardy for our interview in advance of his June 22 performance at the Jazz Winnipeg Festival.

Dusk is one of the headliners at this year’s fest, but his jazz ain’t your parents’ jazz — even if the Toronto-based singer oozes old-school charm and sounds an awful lot like a certain Rat Pack member.

Dusk’s sophomore album, Back in Town, was released in early June and is made up of the sort of tunes couples have been dancing to (and singles have been drinking themselves stupid to) for decades. Though the disc bears all the elements that make for a great jazz album — slinky sax lines, swelling choruses and infallibly romantic lyrics sung by a handsome young fella — Dusk offers a more modern, youthful and simplified take on the classic genre.

“For this album I wanted to record all my favourites, and maybe some obscure stuff that hasn’t been done,” Dusk says. “For me, it was important to have half of it have my jazz roots, and the other half had to have my love for pop. I mean, I love Green Day, Rod Stewart, Justin Timberlake — my palette is quite wide. And how you tie that together is to have songs that have lyrics that are simple and memorable.”

Back in Town undoubtedly has its pop sensibilities, but it’s still way more Sinatra than Timberlake. Dusk makes such classics as On the Street Where You Live and Get Me to the Church on Time accessible to younger cats, even if they’ve never heard of My Fair Lady. Thanks in part to a wave of young crooners, jazz is no longer a genre left uncharted by young music fans who previously associated it with band geeks and the elderly.

“I think it’s great that younger people are listening to jazz, but I also think everything goes in phases,” Dusk says. “I don’t think it’s necessarily just because of artists like myself or Michael Bublé.

“Back in the ’90s, music was highly technical. Now I think people want to be involved in music. Jazz is a refreshing reminder of how music can be written. The best songs of all time are the ones you can hum to.”

Still, Dusk is singing songs that a lot of people know very well — which raises the question of how well a 27-year-old can identify with songs twice as old as he is.

“When I was younger, I used to think that life is relative, that you can sing whatever songs you want,” he says. “But as I got older, I could relate to these songs better. I actually think this album is very reflective of my age. They’re not songs about a lived life, they’re songs about living life.”

Dusk’s Juno-nominated debut, 2004’s Two Shots, was enough to catapult the young singer into the spotlight as both a jazz darling and a pop prince, but his wasn’t an instant rise to success. Dusk has been serious about jazz from the beginning — he studied at St. Michael’s Choir School and was a student in the prestigious jazz program at York University. That’s amazing when you consider Dusk’s MO isn’t that different from that of a cover band at The Zoo — both are making names for themselves with other people’s tunes.

“The art of jazz is about rehashing,” Dusk says. “Every artist has to jump through that hoop. If someone wants to say I’m copying a specific artist, fine. But at the end of the day, music is very personal.

“But if someone says I sound like Sinatra, well... that’s the biggest compliment I can get.”

Dusk has indeed been compared to Old Blue Eyes, and his charismatic charm makes him a natural performer. Still, even a guy who favours pinstripe suits and goes by the slick handle of ‘Matt Dusk’ occasionally has less-than-smooth moments.

“When you perform, every show is different,” he says. “It’s like going on a blind date. There’s that same nervous energy. Some shows everyone laughs at your jokes, other shows you just can’t win. I’ve been loved and hated.”

When it comes to the female half of Dusk’s audience, you’d guess he’s mostly loved. The crooner is a charmer — and he’s the kind of guy who apologizes for being two minutes late for a phone interview. Even so, it doesn’t hurt to be one of Weekly Scoop’s 21 most beautiful people in Canada.

“I think it was a slow year,” Dusk jokes. “I’m not exactly inventing the wheel here. It’s just about going back to basics and being a gentleman and doing what my parents taught me — to be a good boy.”