Jackson Welchner is a freelancing vocalist, bassist, composer, arranger, and mixing engineer based out of Toronto. Partial to jazz, folk, rock, and improvised genres, Jackson always strives to “serve the music”.

Over the years he has performed with a wide variety of ensembles. He has shared the stage with Jackie Richardson, Manteca, Chelsea McBride, Brownman Ali, and Tanya Tagaq. He has crooned with the Toronto All-Star Big Band, toured Canada with the Socialist Night School, barber-shopped with The Yonge Guns (now Maple Reserve), and improvised with the Element Choir. In 2025, he was a supporting vocalist on two Juno nominated recordings: Sarah Jerrom’s “Magpie” and Laila Biali’s “Wintersongs”, the latter of which is also currently up for a Grammy. Jackson brings dedication and energy to every style of music he encounters.

In March of 2023, he released his first full length jazz-fusion LP, “Blink Twice”. Starting the process in 2021, he fully composed, arranged, produced and mixed the album on his own, with features from Toronto’s best musicians, such as Patrick Smith, Anh Phung, Michael Davidson, Marito Marques, Sarah Thawer, and Thom Gill. He also arranged all of the string parts, performed by the Venuti String Quartet, as well as a 4 piece horn section. He was able to realize this project on physical vinyl records through generous grants from FACTOR, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.

Since then, he’s mixed albums and singles for some of Toronto’s up and coming jazz and contemporary artists, such as Madeleine Ertel, Raquel Marina, and Reuven Grajner.

As a composer and arranger, Jackson works with choirs, chamber brass ensembles, string quartets and a couple of his own larger ensembles featuring brass, woodwinds, strings, and occasionally extra percussion. In 2018, he joined the Spectrum Music team as a composer and an Artistic Producer, writing for Andrew Downing, Bruce Cassidy, and Larnell Lewis. Currently he is leading his collaborative concert series “Songs of the City”, where he arranges music from local artists of a variety of genres for chamber jazz ensembles.

Jackson has had the privilege of studying voice with the likes of Theo Bleckmann, JD Walter, Norma Winstone, Christine Duncan, Alex Samaras, Fay Victor, and Shannon Gunn, and has studied composition and arranging intensively with David Braid, Terry Promane, Phil Nimmons, John McLeod, Ralph Alessi, and Andrew Downing. He is influenced by Frank Sinatra, Kurt Elling, and Betty Carter to name a few.