"A top selling jazz record in Canada might be selling five or six thousand records - and that's jazz legends, not locals," saxophone player Kirk MacDonald says over the phone from his Toronto home. This small ripple, in what is veritably a sea of Canadian record sales, is probably the reason so few people seem to be familiar with this veteran jazz musician even though he has three records to his credit (along with a slew of others he performed on as a side-man), and he just won the Juno for Best Mainstream Jazz Album for his latest effort, The Atlantic Sessions.

MacDonald has emerged as a mature musician who understands the different roles in a band and has a respect for improvisation and creativity that allows him to compose the kind of jazz that has been winning him awards. "When you're working as a leader you kind of have to define the space that the music occupies," he says. "For instance, you have to determine the concept of the recording, either through compositions and/or choice of musicians. You have to think about the chemistry of the group: what is going to allow the musicians you choose to record with the opportunity to play at their best without asking too much or giving the music too much direction."

When the semester wraps up at the University of Toronto, where MacDonald teaches a younger generation of artists, he'll start preparing for the season of festivals on the international circuit. He will return home to Nova Scotia for the annual July festival in Halifax where he'll step in to play with the Maritime Jazz Orchestra. Currently MacDonald is putting the finishing touches on his fourth album which will be distributed by Koch Canada both domestically and internationally.

"I also believe that when you have done a number of projects as a leader that it's a little easier to go in and understand what a leader is going through. In many cases you can actually bring more to those situations because of that understanding - or you can make things a little easier for someone. I think in many cases, not only with myself but with other musicians, that's why they get called to do things - for their input. A lot of times this is not verbal communication, these are just things that people have known how to play for years and things you learn as a musician."

"You stifle somebody else's creativity by making things too specific - a big part of jazz music is the fact that it's improvised so you have to create an environment where people who are great improvisers can actually improvise - where the music is not so specific that you lose sight of that fact. By the same token you have to provide enough direction that musicians have some idea of what the parameters are or whether there even are parameters to the music. So, that has to be done either in a musical way or a verbal way or just through the written music. In a certain sense I have found that working on somebody else's project is really a lot easier because you basically have to be ready to play and be open to whatever signals you might be getting."

MacDonald grew up in the small town of New Waterford, Cape Breton. He started playing saxophone at the age of ten, and his love of jazz managed to flourish despite his seeming isolation from the genre save what he could take in through CBC Radio. The resulting years of collecting records via excursions to and beyond Halifax and the willingness of friends to tote handfuls of albums back from their own trips led MacDonald, after studying with numerous teachers including Don Palmer, straight to Toronto.

Moving to Toronto opened more doors for MacDonald. It allowed for more access to jazz both on and off record. The years following his move led to a stream of concerts and jazz festival performances throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia along with teaching credits at a bevy of universities and colleges. MacDonald has proven himself to be both an inspirational saxophone player and a team player. "Part of the beauty of jazz music is that you can experience playing with other musicians who all have different personalities and that, to me, is one of the special things about playing jazz - just tapping into somebody else's energy and finding common ground to communicate musically," says MacDonald.

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