The Button Factory Band plays jazz: a unique and heroic blend of comic, tragic, eclectic and subversive jazz.

Their new album - BUCKMINSTER FULLER DREAMS - features detailed and hilarious instrumentals, some improvisational sound painting, one hiphop-oriented Thelonious Monk arrangement, a funk song about big city rioting, an anti-war piece with text by novelist Margaret Sweatman, and a musical setting of the first 19 numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, among other delights.

The Button Factory Band came to life in 2013 when Glenn Buhr asked a collection of improvisational jazz musicians in southwestern Ontario to form a band to explore some sociopolitical ideas. They started with some blues-oriented material, along with some Thelonious Monk music and a jazz-punk rendering of an Appalachian fiddle tune, then fanned out in other directions. Since then, they've partnered with the Penderecki String Quartet on a few projects, and also appeared with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for a performance of their work Guernica 2017. They've released two previous albums: JACKHAMMER, and ASSASSINATION NIGHT (which features the Penderecki String Quartet).

      Glenn Buhr, keyboards/guitar/vocals/music director
      Peter Lutek, bassoon/sax/clarinet
      Reg Schwager, guitar
      Victor Bateman, bass/vocals
      Brandon Miguel Valdivia, drums/percussion

   • Glenn Buhr is well-known as a composer and producer. His music is performed all over the world by jazz and classical ensembles. He came to national attention when the Toronto and Montreal Symphony Orchestras championed his work. He's toured Canada twice as a jazz artist, and co-founded the Winnipeg New Music Festival in 1992 (with conductor Bramwell Tovey).

   • Reg Schwager is a highly respected veteran in the jazz community as a guitarist, and also as a composer and arranger. He's performed with a long list of important jazz musicians, including George Shearing, Diana Krall, Mel Torme and Gary Burton, among many others.

   • Peter Lutek is a woodwind virtuoso and also a wizard with electronic sound. He plays with the Mark Segger Sextet, the Avi Granite 6 and the Art of Time Ensemble, and he's been a soloist with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Quebec Symphony Orchestra.

   • Victor Bateman has been musically active in and around Toronto since 1981. He leads the Victor Bateman Trio, and has recorded and toured with Canadian music icon Murray McLauchlan. He also works with pianist Tania Gill, blues artist Suzie Vinnick, and The Hulagoons, Toronto’s premiere faux Hawaiian band.

   • Brandon Miguel Valdivia has performed and recorded with a large collection of successful artists including U.S. Girls, A Tribe Called Red, Jeremy Dutcher and Lido Pimienta. He has amassed numerous Polaris Prize Shortlist nominations, and recorded for 2 Polaris Prize winners and one Juno Award-winning Album. He's performed throughout Canada, the United States, China, Europe and in Colombia.