Celebrating a Month of Island Inspiration: The midway point of the Stone & Sky Music & Art Series, 2026

The Pelee Grapevine

Celebrating a Month of Island Inspiration: The midway point of the Stone & Sky Music & Art Series, 2026

Published: August 1, 2026

The aptly named Borderland Ensemble is made up of both Canadian and American artists, brought together through their shared time at Wayne State University and by Detroit’s vibrant jazz scene. They described the difficulty in finding time to get the band together for the sole purpose of creating new material following the release of their new collaborative album, Live at Mackenzie Hall Jazz.

Austin Di Pietro, band leader and trumpet player, described how “being [on the Island] gives you the space to really think a lot about that stuff that would normally live in the phone, had we not had the time and the space to flesh it out”. They used their experiences over the week on the Island – from sudden storms to swarming sand flies – to inspire new music, and were later able to play it for an audience of Islanders who understood intimately the feelings of exhilaration and exasperation behind the source material.

See the full article here.