Ray Montford Group

Ray Montford's narrative guitar style and compositions are melodic, powerful and haunting. He has released six albums of original music that fuses rock, world, folk/country and blues/jazz into a dynamic concert repertoire.

For more than 15 years the Ray Montford Group have shared their visceral energy with thousands of fans at music festivals, clubs and theatres. They have toured Europe, shared the stage with the tony levin band (peter gabriel) and recently sold out the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto for the release of his latest album, a fragile balance, also available as an LP.  His tunes are featured regularly on CBC National Radio and Galaxie Satellite Radio, which voted him 2007's Instrumentalist to Watch.

Born in Ottawa and raised bilingually, Ray completed studies in recording engineering, production and music performance at the seminal MIA Program in London, which set the stage for the two integral elements that define his artistic vision today: music & sound.  To him, one doesn't exist without the other and this is sonically and compositionally evident throughout his body of work.  In addition to his performance career, Ray owns and operates Soundhole Studio where he assists other artists with his recording, musical, and production aesthetics.
 
Over the years, Ray has gratefully received support from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Factor and the External Affairs Department, as well as sponsorship from Totem Acoustic and Paradigm Speakers, for his compositions, recordings, and performances.  He has been a juror for the Toronto Arts Council's Composer Program and for the Gemini awards.  His music has been licensed for film and TV and he periodically scores to picture.  From 1994-1997, he was the guitar player for Canadian sensations the rankins, and in 1998 with Gaelic singer mary jane lamond.

Ray Montford Group is guitarist/composer Ray Montford, drummer Gary Craig (tom cochrane, bruce cockburn) and bassist Russ Boswell (david wilcox, mary margaret o'hara).

 "The ever-tasteful musician has a gift for grand musical moments that retain their intimacy... an atmospheric, emotional road well worth travelling."
- Steve Baylin, Ottawa Xpress

"As hypnotic as a highway at night, always-moving, always-changing scenery, the kind of music you hear on an old car radio in the middle of nowhere."
- Denis Armstrong, Ottawa Sun