Olivia Khoury
Biography
Olivia Khoury spent years floating through the Montreal jazz conservatory circuit before realizing that formal training is a trap if you don't have some dirt under your fingernails. She finally landed at the Treatment Room in Montreal to track her 2023 debut, Portraits, and you can hear the ghosts of that city’s indie-classical scene all over the tape. It’s not just a jazz record; it’s a document of a songwriter trying to figure out how to be precise without being cold. The session players on that record aren't just hired guns—they're the pulse of the thing, creating a weird, atmospheric tension that pushes her voice out of the lounge and into something much more fragile. It’s a dense, textured sound that feels like it was recorded in the middle of a Montreal winter when nobody wants to leave the house. She’s navigating that thin line between the technical perfection her teachers probably wanted and the messy, rhythmic freedom that actually makes a record worth spinning.