Mike Anklewicz is a freelance saxophonist and woodwind player and has performed at some of the top venues in Toronto (Massey Hall, Harbourfront Centre, The Rex Hotel and Jazz Club) and around the world, including recordings and performances in Canada, the USA, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Germany and India.

 

Having extensively studied classical music on the saxophone, he also performs jazz, klezmer, rock, R&B, Balkan and Indian music and is one of the few musicians in North America to play the Alghoza, a rare double flute from the Thar desert straddling India and Pakistan. He returned to India and continued his studies of the Alghoza and Poongi, two traditional wind instruments of the region, in December 2019/January 2020 with the support of a Chalmers Professional Development Grant from the Ontario Arts Council to support this work.

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Mike is co-artistic director of Ensemble Topaz, founded in 2016 with dancer Paromita Kar, a combined music and dance company that focuses on Central and South Asian cultural heritages. Ensemble Topaz specializes in music and dance from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Ensemble Topaz has performed all over Ontario with performances at festivals and private events. In 2019, Mike performed with Ensemble Topaz for a Northern Ontario tour of Festivals of India and performed on the WestJet Stage at the 2019 Tirgan Festival at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.

 

While 2020 was not a busy year for live performances, he did perform with Ensemble Topaz at the Festival of India and Festival of Colours in Thunder Bay, Ontario and produced several music videos for “Global Rhythms Live,” a world music and dance livestream show that was broadcast online during the pandemic.