Electronic Press Kit · 2027 Festival Season
Songs, book reading and live improvisation. Founding member of Blue Rodeo, five-time Juno winner, film composer, author — touring solo and available to Canadian festivals for the 2027 season.
A recent solo performance: songs, stories and improvised piano.
Open on Vimeoas a founding member of Blue Rodeo
1984 – present
CBC, Bravo, Nickelodeon, RAI
Canada, US, Europe, New Zealand
Bob Wiseman has spent four decades doing the thing festival audiences remember longest: making a room laugh, then making it go quiet. He co-founded Blue Rodeo in 1984 and left in 1992 to follow a solo path that has produced thirteen albums, more than forty film and television scores, a 350-page book, and a suitcase of Super 8 films he scores live on accordion, guitar and piano.
Along the way he discovered and produced Ron Sexsmith, Mimi Oz, Kid-in-the-Hall Bruce McCulloch, Lowest of the Low, Bob Snider, Kyp Harness, Anhai, Robert Priest, and Jess Reimer. He has toured with Feist, Owen Pallett and Kid-in-the-Hall Scott Thompson, and guested with Wilco, Edie Brickell and Eugene Chadbourne. His song "White Dress" was recorded by Serena Ryder; his themes open CBC's Material World and Someone Knows Something.
He has taught courses in creative writing, music business and songwriting at Western University's Don Wright Faculty of Music, Seneca Polytechnique and Toronto Metropolitan University, and was awarded his PhD by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation in July 2026 — which is a formal way of saying no two of his sets have ever been the same.
A Bob Wiseman show is a night out, not just a set list. The audience arrives for the songs and stays for the conversation — between tunes, between keys, between laughter and the sudden, absolute quiet that falls when a room realizes it is hearing something unrepeatable.
Wiseman's between-song stories are famous: dry, self-deprecating, sometimes sharply political, always human. The comedy disarms the room so completely that when he turns to a song about loss, justice or memory, the silence is its own sound.
Improvisation is not a coda here — it is the engine. A familiar song can detour into spontaneous piano, an audience question can become a new introduction, and the Super 8 films are rescored live, differently each night.
People leave talking. About a song they had forgotten, a film they did not expect, a joke that landed sideways, or a moment when the artist seemed to be making the whole thing up on the spot — because, often, he was.
45 – 75 min · Any stage with a piano or keyboard
The core show. Political songs, comic asides and improvised piano that never lands the same way twice. Works equally on a folk mainstage, a church, or a club side-stage.
60 min · Screen + projector, seated venue
A retrospective of Wiseman's Super 8 films and videos — subtitled where needed — accompanied live on accordion, guitar and piano. Previously presented throughout Canada, Kuopio, Finland and Genoa, Italy.
90 min · Workshop tent or classroom
Drawn from the book Music Lessons (ECW Press, 2020) and PhD research at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. Ideal daytime programming for festival pass holders.
Flexible · Mainstage collaboration
A natural fit for festival workshop stages: Wiseman has performed with Feist, Wilco, Ron Sexsmith, Owen Pallett, Serena Ryder, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Eugene Chadbourne and Kid-in-the-Hall Scott Thompson.
"O my, this is fucking genius!!! Making me smile like a 2 month old baby farting!!! I'm sold on being amazed by page 2!"
"My worst piano student"
"From a legal point of view, this congenial improvising pianist, theatre musician and former Blue Rodeo member may be Canada's most offensive songwriter."
"He's some kind of genius"
"In Her Dream was named to the Canadian music critics' list of the top 100 albums of all time — after Warner destroyed the first thousand copies over a song about Salvador Allende."
"Theme and Variations landed in NOW Magazine's Top 10 albums of the year."
Founding member of Blue Rodeo, playing keys through the band's first five albums and five Juno Awards.
In Her Dream: Bob Wiseman Sings Wrench Tuttle released on Atlantic — later listed among Canada's top 100 albums of all time.
When Prince announced he was giving up his name, Wiseman attempted to legally reclaim it — a characteristically mischievous, dead-serious gesture from an artist who has never been afraid of the absurd.
Builds a second career as a producer,
recording dozens of Canadian songwriters:
hear a select few
Ron Sexsmith (Grand Opera Lane)
Mimi Oz (Three of Swords)
Kid-in-the-Hall Bruce McCulloch (Shame-Based Man)
UIC (The Wiseman Sessions)
Kyp Harness (Nowhere Fast)
Robert Priest (Love is Hard)
Jess Reimer (The Nightjar and The Garden).
Creates Actionable, a Super 8 + live-accordion presentation touring the Uno Festival and Fringe circuits; collaborates theatrically with Kid-in-the-Hall Scott Thompson.
Writes the theme for CBC Radio's Someone Knows Something; scores The Drawer Boy, Temperance, Rasputin and dozens more.
MES from York University; PhD in Improvisation awarded by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (July 2026); previously taught creative writing, music business and songwriting at Western University's Don Wright Faculty of Music, Seneca Polytechnique and Toronto Metropolitan University.
Free for festival programming, print and web use. Click any image to open the full-resolution file — please keep the photographer credit attached.
Live footage, Super 8 shorts and the full catalogue — YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram and Facebook are collected on the Linktree below.
Watch Bob Wiseman solo — songs, stories and improvised piano (Vimeo).
YouTubeA solo piano improvisation that drifts into a slow blues for the late slide guitarist Ellen McIlwaine — memory, grief and admiration finding their shape in real time.
YouTube
A song for the late Canadian actress Tracy Wright — a friend remembered in plain language and open chords. (featuring greatest comedian Garrett Jamieson}
LinktreeLive clips, Super 8 shorts and tour updates in one place
StreamingGiulietta Masina at the Oscars Crying, In Her Dream, Accidentally Acquired Beliefs
Official siteDiscography, writing, tour dates and full press history