> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thejazzsentinel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What Sets Virginia MacDonald Apart Is Her Strength - URL: https://www.thejazzsentinel.com/virginia-macdonald-jazz-clarinet/ - Published: 2026-09-02T13:00:33.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T13:00:35.000Z - Description: JUNO Award winning clarinetist Virginia MacDonald was quietly taking over the jazz scene. Quiet no more. - Author: Colleen Clark - Tags: #top-story, Interviews **Clarinetist Virginia MacDonald discusses *In Search Of*, finding her voice in jazz, artistic confidence, life on the road and embracing what sets her apart.** JUNO Award winning clarinetist **Virginia MacDonald** was quietly taking over the jazz scene. Quiet no more. With her debut as a bandleader, *In Search Of,* listeners won’t be able to unhear her greatness. Her playing redefines the musical and technical possibilities of the clarinet. Pairing remarkable musical intuition with innate ability and the discipline developed during her formative years, MacDonald has cultivated a voice that is truly her own. Growing up in Toronto, Canada to an artist mother and jazz musician father, she was surrounded by art and music. Although her love for the clarinet started at age five, her hands were too small to cover the tone holes, so she had to wait a year before her journey officially began. Learning tunes alongside her father, acclaimed saxophonist **Kirk MacDonald**, provided fond memories and invaluable musical training from a young age. Her life on the road rarely slows down while leading her own groups across Europe alongside trumpeter **Joe Magnarelli** and in the United States with frequent collaborator **Todd Marcus**. Her discography is vast and quickly growing as she continues to be one of the first call sideperson for frequent collaborator, virtuoso trombonist **Michael Dease.** Perhaps one of MacDonald’s superpowers is her quiet confidence, something that perhaps wouldn’t be assumed if one was to only hear her play the clarinet. MacDonald’s star is not rising but now shooting across the universe, as it should. It isn’t everyday a person of this age has already unlocked their artistic identity. We thoroughly enjoyed speaking with **Virginia MacDonald** and hope you enjoy learning more about her journey and her music. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup/free) --- **This dialogue has been refined for clarity. Please visit *The Jazz Sentinel*'s** [**YouTube channel**](https://www.youtube.com/@TheJazzSentinel?ref=thejazzsentinel.com) **to view the complete podcast.** --- **Colleen Clark:** Introduce yourself to *The Jazz Sentinel.* **Virginia MacDonald:** I grew up in a really artistic family. My mom is a visual artist and graphic designer and my dad is a saxophone player. So music was always there, always present in my life., I can't really remember a time that it was not there. I started playing the clarinet when I was about six years old. I was enrolled in a really great music program locally in Toronto. We were just talking about how some really great artists out of Toronto who are on the scene now went through this program. People like Anthony Fung, Adam Arruda, and so on and so on. So at the time I think I had the choice of playing a few different instruments. We had some instruments at home. There was a saxophone, obviously. There was a piano. There was a flute, I think there was a guitar. What my Dad had done was laid out all of these different instruments. When I saw the clarinet and I said, "What is that? I want to play that." I was so enamored with it right away. I just fell in love with the look of it. I think maybe subconsciously too, I thought, there's no way I'm playing the same instrument as my Dad. At that age, I said to myself "I'm not doing that." I just gravitated towards the clarinet. My fingers were actually too small to cover the tone holes. I thought they were buttons at the time. I said, "No, my fingers can’t reach the buttons.” I was so determined. I was so determined to play this instrument that I waited until I could cover the tone holes. That was my start. I waited about a year. I think like most North American children I played recorder. I don't know if I killed it at recorder too? I was amazing at the recorder. I was ripping when I was about five years old (laughs). But seriously I don't know if maybe there's an association. I knew it looked physically similar, so that that was kind of my start. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/vmac-2.jpg) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald: Photo credit Lesia Miga At this music school that I went to, we would play in different ensembles, different from week to week. So that was kind of my introduction to playing basic jazz standards. The first song that I really learned how to play was "St. Thomas" by **Sonny Rollins**. It was a really organic process, you know, I remember sitting down with my Dad. Sometimes we would leaf through a real book and he would say, "How about we try playing through the standard together?" It was like, "Okay." So, I feel like it was a very organic thing in the sense that the music was just there for me. I think even at that age I knew, "Okay, well here's a version of whoever, Bird (**Charlie Parker**) or **John Coltrane,** playing the standard that you're playing right now." So it was a mix of learning things including looking at music and starting to get more familiar with that, but then it was a lot of learning orally. That was something that I always felt that I gravitated towards naturally. It just felt like that was how I always thought about music and how I was surrounded by it. So that was kind of my beginnings. **Colleen Clark:** Was it an afterschool program? **Virginia MacDonald:** Saturdays. It was every Saturday during the day. We would rehearse as an ensemble. Then I had private lessons, which was interesting. My first teacher was this great local saxophone player in Toronto. Her name is Jane Fair. Her main instrument was sax. That kind of became a theme in my life and in my studies where I worked with mostly sax players who doubled on clarinet. There just wasn't really another option at the time. There weren't really examples of teachers or mentors, at least in the Toronto area, who I could go to specifically for what I was trying to do, which was play jazz on this instrument. Of course when you're about six or seven years old, you're not really conscious of that, you know? It's more of, this instrument and getting a feel for it, not really considering the lineage of this music. And then, as I got older and started progressing as a player and musician and I started taking what I was doing a little bit more seriously, that's kind of when I realized there really are not a lot of people who have done this on clarinet. And even the examples that I could find or that I was introduced to a lot of these these musicians are kind of maybe rooted in - I always have to be careful when I say this because I feel like people get mad - but they're rooted in a more traditional style of playing. And at that point I had already, been introduced to people like **Coltrane**, **Bird**, **Sonny Rollins** and **Joe Henderson**, and onwards. So I felt that I had a hard time connecting to maybe these older styles of the tradition that I have so much respect for but in terms of what I had been hearing my whole life, it felt kind of far removed from that. So, I felt like I didn't really have a lot of examples of people I could draw from on the clarinet specifically when I was younger. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/Album-Cover.jpg) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald: Photo credit Lesia Miga **Colleen Clark:** I’m a nerd. I love my jazz history and you know we all love Louis Armstrong and we love where our music came from, but when we grow up in an environment with a certain sound, that's what we're trying to emulate. So if your environment was the music of your parents, Trane, Bird, of course that's what you want to sound like. If you're seeking out someone on your instrument that is just historically correct. **Virginia MacDonald:** 100%. I did a lot of digging into that music. I still have so much respect for some of those musicians, but it just did not resonate with me in the same way. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup/free) **Colleen Clark:** 2026\. Virginia MacDonald is just raking all of her reviews over the coals! This debut record is amazing, your writing, your playing, your ensemble. Talk about *In Search Of.* **Virginia MacDonald:** This is my first album as a band leader where I'm leading my own recording session. That took some time for me. I think one of the things that happened in my career that I really did not expect at all, was that I ended up and still do a lot of work as a side person. I just kind of thought when I was getting started in my own career, I was pretty realistic about the fact that I was playing a fringe instrument in the sense that, maybe more people would want a traditional lineup in their own projects that consisted of sax and trumpet or trombone. I didn't really have any hang-ups about that. I thought that I would probably end up doing a lot of work as a band leader and I'm okay with that. I feel like it encouraged me to really develop my own voice, to put myself out there to reach out to venues, reach out to clubs, reach out to festivals, and put together a narrative of what it is that I do. That's something that I encourage everyone to do on some level, just to be able to actually put words and a meaning into what it is that you do. To be able to actually say, hey, I am this person. This is what I'm doing. This is my music. This is my art. I think that just by doing that, that process of doing that over and over again really gave me a lot more confidence in what I was doing musically and otherwise. > One of the things that I felt before was that I was at a disadvantage because the instrument that I played was different. Over time I realized more and more that this is actually a strength. This is something that sets me apart. We all have those things and unfortunately a lot of the time are convinced that those things are deficits or things that we need to change or alter to fit in. > Anything that separates us or makes us different, those the cornerstones of what our art is about. That was something that happened. I was working a lot as a band leader and I guess you know maybe people were interested in the fact that I played a different instrument or that I could offer a different sound to their projects. So that led to me doing a lot of side person work throughout my 20s and and still now into my 30s. Throughout that whole period I was writing music but I never really felt as though I could congregate it in a way that I wanted to record my own album. I also didn't really feel any immediate pressure to release something of my own. I felt like I was working a lot. I was spending a lot of time on the road already. I'm happy with what I'm doing. I'm getting experience. I'm learning so much, getting to work with a lot of great musicians, people who I look up to and looked up to when I was growing up. So in a sense, a lot of this music I had been sitting on for a long time, but I'm happy that I waited, that I had the experience to record, a lot of albums with great musicians and to kind of see that process from the inside. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/Cover-for-In-Search-Of-Single-1.JPG) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald: Photo credit Lesia Miga We've recorded a lot with with **Michael Dease**, for example, and being in the studio and seeing how a great musician goes about putting together a band that hasn't played together before necessarily, (perhaps ever) \[both laugh\]. I'm not going to give too many secrets away, but how do you go into the studio and arrange music sometimes on the spot? I'm just naming one name but these things happen all the time. Just the experience that I got recording and working with different artists, I learned this is how to lead a band. This is how to dictate to the people in your band I want this sound. These are the things that if you trust the people in your band musically and otherwise you don't have to dictate those things, you can leave it to the musicians and their own discretion. Through that was really helpful in terms of finally being able to say okay this is what I want to do. This is some of the music that I've been working on and writing over the past 10 years or so. Then in turn putting together a band of musicians who I felt would be a really great fit with each other. Again also people who I could trust musically and otherwise in the sense that it's about the music first and foremost and making something that can come together and exist within that realm. It's not about ego. It's about the collective of the music. So I feel like if I was younger, I don't know if I would have been able to consider those things in the same way. A lot of the music is my own. With my own writing, I try to have an impression of what I want. Some things are specific, but there's a lot of things that I'd like to leave open and to the interpretation of the people who I'm working with. I'm a very big believer that all of this is a collaborative process. There's things that you know certain people, whether it be a piano player or a drummer or bass player they are going to have a different initial kind of feeling of oh I should be doing this thing here or this is the feel that I would go for on this type of song. I can add this thing in harmonically. So I like leaving that openness I think to a certain extent with my own music. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/Photo-for-Left-Inside-CD-Layout--If-Needed-.jpeg) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald: Photo credit Todd Marcus Then the two standards on the album are two ballads. The first one being “Stardust.” I mean I love playing ballads. I love playing ballads so much. I think that was just part of my early influences, listening especially to sax players, people like Bird, people like Sonny Rollins, (Col)Trane who were able to take a ballad and just make it feel like they were really singing through their horn to the point where it's almost like you can hear the lyrics coming out of what they're doing. And so for me, that always felt like a really pure expression of the music. When we think about standards, that's still some of my favorite material to come back to, ballads specifically. I wanted to include that one, “Stardust.” That's, you know, one of my all-time favorites. Thinking about the life of a song as well. To me, that's such a crazy one where we're looking at this song that is now over one hundred years old, thinking about all of the history there, the different interpretations, the amount of people, the different types of musicians who have recorded, played that song, the meaning behind it. That's something that is super interesting to me. Same with “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” by one of my favorite musicians, the great **Charles Mingus**. And again, just a beautiful love letter to **Duke Ellington** and his music. One of the great things about having musicians like **Geoffrey Keezer** or **Ira Coleman**, who I recorded those duo tracks with, is you don't really need to say or do anything. It's just there. I remember a similar experience. Me and my Dad have done a lot of recording together. One of the first one of the first albums that I was on was one of his records with **Harold Mabern** and it was no pressure. I was, I don't know, about 20 years old. I was a baby but you know I remember going into the studio. It was a ballads/standards but mostly ballads record. I wanted to play “Skylark" and I was so nervous. I had all my little stuff worked out. I was listening. I thought I was so hip but I remember going into the studio and I said, “Hi Mr. Mabern.” We had met at that point and he was such a gracious, lovely, amazing human being. I said, “I want to play Skylark.” Then he was just sitting down at the piano and thinking for one second and then just played the most beautiful piano intro you can imagine off the cuff, out of nowhere. That was just such a learning experience for me, you know? There was so much that was there without having to prepare or think about it. It wasn't like he needed to take a second to think about what he wanted to do. It was just like, “Skylark,” okay, here we go. Here's the most beautiful intro ever that I just came up with. Just about a note on the musicians who you play with: that's so important. Playing with people who are just going to be there with you in the moment who you know you can count on to just create something. [In Search Of…, by Virginia MacDonald8 track album![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/icon/a0389726013_3-1b691a3c-ba57-4191-bb74-15efb0b1513a.jpg)Virginia MacDonaldRobert Middleton![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/thumbnail/a0389726013_5-b0c62097-59a5-4108-8e13-2396467f301f.jpg)](https://virginiamacdonald.bandcamp.com/album/in-search-of?ref=thejazzsentinel.com) **Colleen Clark:** I mean it'd be impossible to know - only he would know - how many times at that point had he played that tune? How many times did he play that tune differently? You know what I mean? Living jazz history **Virginia MacDonald:** Yeah. 100%. 100%. That's the thing that blows my mind about recording with musicians of that caliber and to have that knowledge and that deep understanding of the music. It's just there, you know? You don't need to draw upon something. It's just there right away. That was a very very special moment. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/virginia_macdonald_b_w_3-1500x1366-1.jpeg) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald **Colleen Clark:** How do you present the professional road life to the youngsters of today? **Virginia MacDonald:** Yeah, that's a good question. First of all, I try to be as empathetic as possible. I think one thing that helps us is we're on the younger side in the sense that, when I feel like when I was in college, most of my professors were 30, 40, or 50 years older than me. Of course there's a lot of things just as we're just talking about that you can get from someone who has that much life experience and especially experience playing this music. I don't disregard that at all. But I do feel like maybe what I see with my own students is a sense I get some of the life experiences that you're going through right now because I'm not too far removed from it myself. There are a lot of unique challenges that we are facing, one generation and now two generations younger than us are facing that just did not exist in the same way before, both on a musical level and on a life level. There are things that are happening around the world that are hard to deal with as human beings and I try to remember being that age. You think you feel very grown up, but you're not when you're 20 years old. You feel like you’re taking on the world. I'm an adult now really for the first time for a lot of younger people. Now I look back at myself and there was so much that I just did not know. I was very shy. I still am. I'm very introverted. I'm a more reserved person in general. It takes me a minute to open up to people, but I remember when I was in college, I was very scared of putting myself out there - the fear I think of failure and rejection. I think that there was so much tied up for me as well in being a young female student in an environment where there was not really any representation both amongst my peers but also amongst my mentors and the faculty, that I felt a lot of weight around what I did musically and feeling as though it needed to be at a certain level for me to present myself or put myself out there. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/Cover-for-Last-Call-Single-and-Back-Cover-of-Album.jpg) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald: Photo credit Lesia Miga One of the things that I try to encourage now when I teach is just trying to be as fearless as possible. The confidence comes from putting yourself out there. It's not the other way around. It's not like you get the confidence out of thin air and then you can do these things. You take the leap of faith. You do things that scare you. Then the confidence comes from realizing nothing happened. Nothing bad or horrible happened. I'm still here. Here I am. I made it through and I can keep going. I think being on the road is a very fast way to learn that. When I started touring, you know, it was everything. I just wanted to take it in. I'm going to all of these new places and meeting all these new people. I'm going on two hours of sleep every night and I'm jet-lagged and that's even before you think about the music part of it. It was just so exciting and new. But I think looking back on it, I was also pretty terrified of the unknown of all of it. Then I also had that feeling at that point in my life of that same pressure around the fact that maybe I'm the only woman in this band. I am maybe one of the younger or the youngest people in this band, so I need to prove myself. I think just again by virtue of just doing so much of it and being in so many situations where I felt that fear after a while I was like, well, wait a second. Why am I feeling like this? You know, I keep getting these calls doing this thing. People seem to be enjoying it. Maybe I'm actually kind of good at this? But that takes time for a lot of people. **Colleen Clark:** It has to come from within. **Virginia MacDonald:** Yeah. But also, you know, the experience of doing it, I think as well. And that’s the important thing. The amount of times I've been on the road and it's not only people who you have never met before, but people who don't even speak the same language as you. You're meeting someone and about to embark on something like, spending 75% of your day with these people who you don't even know and you can barely communicate with them in the same language. But you learn a lot about people as well. For me that's kind of at the center of what we do, you know? > It's a very human pursuit in an increasingly inhuman world. It's at the basis of what we're doing, it's for people and it's with people. I'm really grateful for those experiences. They’re definitely not always easy, but just like you said, very much a learning experience for sure. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c9/0f/c90f7176-f87c-41d8-ad09-68a06ea5c175/content/images/2026/08/virginia.png) Photo provided to The Jazz Sentinel by MacDonald **Colleen Clark:** Virginia, where can we hear you and see you next? **Virginia MacDonald:** Where can we hear and see me? I have a relatively busy fall, less less busy than the summer, but some stuff that I'm really looking forward to...Starting in September, I will be doing a week at **Birdland** with **Greg Osby**'s band. We're playing the music of **Duke Ellington**. So, that's the first week of September. I'll be playing at the **Jazz Forum** in Tarrytown with my quartet. That's on September 12th. That's an album release concert. I'll be coming out to do you know the school **USC**. I don't know if you've heard of it (laughs). **Colleen Clark:** Never heard of them. They're in California, right (laughs)? **Virginia MacDonald:** I think so. I haven't looked at the map yet. I'm very excited to be coming out to work at the school with you with Michael Dease with the big band. So, that's something I'm really really excited about. **Colleen Clark:** So are we. **Virginia MacDonald:** And then some other album release dates in Western Canada and some more work with you. We have some exciting things happening in the Fall, both educational and and performance-wise. Some local local gigs here in New York. I'll be working with one of the projects that I really love is something I co-lead with a great bass clarinet player from Baltimore, **Todd Marcus**. We just finished a summer tour. We recorded an album, so you can stay tuned for that. We'll be playing at the **Keystone Corner** in November. Also, I think we will have some dates in Philly and New York. So, there's Yeah, there's some exciting stuff happening. **Colleen Clark:** Yeah, Virginia. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for doing this and we look forward to hosting you here in Columbia, South Carolina, at the **University of South Carolina,** of course, and on the various other things that we have coming up, which includes **Jazz Girls Day®** and some other cool things that we can't talk about just yet to the public. We'll get it out there for sure. Thank you so much, Virginia. --- [Share](#/share) --- ### Access all areas If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible, and allows *The Jazz Sentinel* to continue to exist. Thank you! 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