Me and Jimi
A eulogy for the late slide guitar virtuoso Ellen McIlwaine — a friend, a mentor, and one of the most fearless players Canada ever had.
New album · 2026 · 2027 Festival Season
Airplane
on the
Highway
The thirteenth record from Bob Wiseman — founding member of Blue Rodeo, five-time Juno winner, and now Dr. Wiseman, PhD in improvisation. Touring Canadian festivals in 2027.
Watch now
Watch Bob Wiseman — live in concert
A recent solo performance: songs, stories and improvised piano.
Open on VimeoNew album
Airplane on the Highway
Released 2026. Singles 'Me and Jimi' and 'More' are out now — a full album cycle to tour through the 2027 festival season.
Bestselling author
Music Lessons — Top 10 book, The Globe and Mail
The 2020 ECW Press memoir landed on The Globe and Mail's top 10 books list. Part 2 arrives spring 2027 — perfect timing for author talks and festival book programming.
Dr. Wiseman
PhD in Improvisation
Doctorate awarded by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation in July 2026 — and still playing the revolutionary, unrepeatable improvised piano sets that earned it.
The record · 2026
Airplane on the Highway started in Sweden. Wiseman was booked to play concerts in Uppsala and Stockholm, and the songs began arriving there — on trains, in borrowed rooms, between soundchecks.
A record that starts on a Swedish tour and ends up somewhere between eulogy and protest — grief, aging, scandal and the loves that never quite happened, all played with the loose hand of a lifelong improviser.
Elsewhere the album turns to the trial of Jian Ghomeshi, the death of William Hurt, and a run of songs about lost love and missed love. It is the most direct writing of his career, and it plays beautifully solo at a piano.
More
A song about aging written by Lynn Miles, delivered plainly and without flinching. The kind of song festival audiences go quiet for.
The Jian Ghomeshi trial
Wiseman's long-running instinct for the politically inconvenient song, aimed at a story the country argued about and then stopped talking about.
The death of William Hurt
An elegy for the actor, written the way Wiseman writes elegies — sideways, specific, and funnier than you expect before it lands.
Lost love and missed love
The quieter half of the record: reflections on the loves that ended and ones that never began.
The Holiday Tavern
A clear-eyed look at hard drugs used once upon a time — unflinching, specific, and sung from the other side of the story.
Love Song to Chicago
A tribute to the 90s collaborating with Chicago's Matt Suhar of Tantrum Management, tracing the friendships and adventures that shaped that stretch of Wiseman's career.
The Rescue (no one's coming)
A song about musician gods — Tammi Terrell, David Ruffin, James Brown and Michael Jackson — the tragic realization a broken world doesn't necessarily include any ambulances.
The book
Music Lessons — and the sequel, spring 2027
Music Lessons (ECW Press, 2020) was named a top 10 book of the year by The Globe and Mail — 350 pages of stories from inside Canadian music, told the way he tells them from a piano bench. Part 2 arrives in spring 2027, which makes next summer the natural moment for a reading, an author talk, or a spoken-word set alongside the music.
Dr. Wiseman
PhD in Improvisation, awarded July 2026
Wiseman was awarded his doctorate by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation in July 2026. On stage it means what it always meant: revolutionary, unrepeatable improvised piano — no two sets alike, and a masterclass your daytime programming can build a tent around.
What you can book in 2027
Solo: Piano, Book Reading & Stories
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.
Films with Live Score
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.
Improvisation Workshop / Masterclass
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.
Guest Collaborator / Curated Set
Flexible · Mainstage collaboration
A natural fit for festival workshop stages: Wiseman has performed with Feist, Wilco, Ron Sexsmith, Owen Pallett, <strong>Serena Ryder</strong>, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Eugene Chadbourne and Kid-in-the-Hall Scott Thompson.
What a Bob Wiseman concert feels like
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.
The room laughs, then goes quiet
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.
No two sets are ever the same
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.
A night out, not a recital
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.
Press
"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."
Watch & listen
Vimeo
Live performance video
Watch Bob Wiseman solo — songs, stories and improvised piano (Vimeo).
YouTubeMe & Jimi — live solo performance
A 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.
YouTubemothface@yahoo.ca
A song for the late Canadian actress Tracy Wright — a friend remembered in plain language and open chords. (featuring greatest comedian Garrett Jamieson}
LinktreeAll the social media — YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook
Live clips, Super 8 shorts and tour updates in one place
StreamingListen on Spotify
Giulietta Masina at the Oscars Crying, In Her Dream, Accidentally Acquired Beliefs
Official sitebobwiseman.ca
Discography, writing, tour dates and full press history
Advance & logistics
- Based in
- Toronto, ON — drivable to most Ontario & Quebec festivals
- Configuration
- Solo (1 traveller). Duo and small-ensemble options on request.
- Backline needed
- Tuned acoustic piano or 88-key weighted keyboard, one vocal mic, one DI
- Films set adds
- Projector + screen, stereo playback, blackout or dusk slot
- Set length
- 45 – 75 minutes, flexible to your slot
- Availability
- Open for 2027 summer & fall festival dates