BIO

Elyse is a prolific and disciplined writer who does not limit herself to one genre. She has burgeoning files in her studio filled with completed songs and compositions, snippets of verses and choruses on burned CDs, ideas jotted down on the back of business cards and taped to her studio walls, scribbled bits of manuscript paper shoved into sorting boxes from Chapters Bookstore … and still she continues to write as if her life depended on it.

Elyse Bruce knew she would be a songwriter and performer when she was two years old. Years later, she is living her dream and has added composer, arranger, educator, and arts event organizer, among other job descriptions, to an already impressive career.

With a strong background in classical, jazz and pop music, Elyse defies labels and convention, preferring to write and perform according to her heart's desire.

Elyse deftly identifies the jazz bass line in music by Chopin. She skillfully recognizes the heavy metal influences found in Beethoven. She sees the bluegrass impression on jazz torch song numbers.

She has enough well written original material to cut a half dozen CDs in varying genres – instrumental, jazz, adult contemporary, uptown country, rock, southern rock – and writes every day without question.

Classically trained pianist through private studies with teachers from the Conservatory of Music - Paris (France), Trinity College of Music- London (England), and the Conservatory of Music – Toronto (Canada), she has studied jazz with Mark Eisenmann (Toronto, Canada) and Gerry Dere (Edmonton, AB). She also studied orchestral arranging and computer technology for recording and composing with Gerry Dere (Edmonton, AB).

Over the years, she has worked on-stage and in studio with such Juno and Felix award winning artists as Michel Lalonde (Garalou), Genevieve Paris, Mario Chenart and others. She has been a sideman as well as a session player, a producer as well as an arranger, a vocal coach as well as a back-up vocalist, a lead singer as well as a musical director.

And as if that's not enough to keep one person hopping, Elyse is also a single mom raising her totally awesome autistic 12-year-old son whom she credits as the inspiration for most of the best material she's ever written.