Micah Weekes

Micah Weekes started banging on the piano around age two and fell in love with the sound of the keys which he has now turned into his passion. In 2017 at the age of 15 Micah was featured in “What’s Your Story”, a national storytelling project celebrating Canada’s 150th Birthday on CBC, where it gave us more insight into exactly how he started and what keeps him interested.

In the article, Micah stated that classical music was a major part of his life growing up. He listened to composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mozart and as well as many others. At age four, he started taking lessons at the North York Suzuki School of Music and then branched out to study solely with private teachers.

He is now pursuing his dream of not only studying jazz performance and composition, but also of continuing to hone his skills in music production/sound engineering. At 8 years old, Micah joined his church’s youth worship band as the keyboardist and continues to be part of the worship team. At 13, he started to pass on his knowledge to others through teaching. As such, he has taught both kids and adults music, be it chord progressions or piano basics.

It wasn’t until the age of 15 that Micah was introduced formally to jazz when his mother signed him up to audition for the JazzFM.91 Youth Big Band. From then on, his musical journey took a drastic turn. Micah discovered that jazz was the genre of music meant for him.

Mostly self-taught he learned how to solo, accompany, and read jazz standards during and throughout his time as a member of the JazzFm.91 Youth Big Band. Through the audition process for the big band, he was recommended for and received a scholarship to study jazz piano for a semester at the Humber College Community Program.

Micah continues to hone his skills in not only jazz performance and composition, but also in contemporary worship, gospel, and classical. He performs regularly at Toronto’s jazz hub, The Rex and in this his graduating year at Roland Marion High School in Scarborough.

The one thing that Micah says he loves about music and composing is “that there is no such thing as a mistake. It's all about what you want and feel. Your piece expresses your emotions and your preferred style of music at that point in time.”