Beacher Justin Gray nominated for Grammy Award in Best Immersive Audio Album category for Immersed

By MATTHEW STEPHENS

From Glen Ames to the Grammys – the Beach’s very own Juno Award-winning bassist, producer, sound engineer and college professor Justin Gray is making history as the first Canadian artist nominated for an award in the Best Immersive Audio Album category at the upcoming 2026 Grammy awards.

“It’s a great honour, and an exceptional feeling,” said Gray in an interview with Beach Metro Community News.

“We don’t make music for awards, but with the recording academy specifically, and just to have your peers and the industry recognize something and really hold it up to say that ‘this is being appreciated, this is excellent work,’ it’s very touching and inspiring.”

The eight-track album, aptly titled Immersed, takes listeners on a musical journey unlike any other. With songs using Indian classical music as a backdrop that sets the stage for unconventional drum patterns, jazzy horns, and ethereal strings – the album seamlessly blends different styles of music to create a listening experience tailored to a global audience.

“It really goes through a number of different genres between jazz music and Indian classical music, chamber music, electronic music,” said Gray. “It’s just a reflection of my own musical professional life.”

The album features the collective efforts of more than 38 artists, 34 of which are based in the City of Toronto, and represent cultures from different parts of the world.

“That’s been the coolest part about it. And then, the Toronto aspect of it is that this is 38 artists. Almost everybody lives in Toronto, or at least calls Toronto home,” said Gray. “It certainly is representative of folks from every part of the world.”

As an artist with more than 20 years of experience in the music industry, Gray decided he wanted to take the listening experience of his second studio album to the next level.

Much like a movie theatre sound system, the album has been mixed in Dolby Atmos to deliver a 360-degree, multi-speaker listening experience – a fact Gray is proud to say that he’s “one of the first in the world” to be making music in this format.

“The history of composition in relationship to space is not brand new. But in the case of this particular record, it is me really pushing that concept to a new place of really integrating it at a compositional level,” said Gray.

“With this music, I started at the very beginning, imagining that you might hear certain instruments behind you, or beside you, or even in front and above you.”

To encapsulate a truly immersive audio-visual experience, the album is accompanied by visuals showcasing each song’s live performance, integrated with dance performances, and what Gray describes as “nature performances.”

“This record was recorded over the course of 35 days in the studio,” said Gray. “We captured every single performance with beautiful cameras and lighting.”

Songs on the album champion Gray’s mixed Indian and Canadian heritage, blending the western sounds of rock, blues, and jazz with popular Indian instruments like the sitar, sarod, and tabla, to create a listening experience that simultaneously feels both familiar and foreign across audiences.

“At the end of the day, the biggest thing when you’re writing music is that it needs to come from a place that has really embedded itself in into your musical language or your creativity,” said Gray, referring to his extensive 20-year study of Indian classical music.

During a two-year stint in India after college, Gray developed a deeper connection to Indian classical music, where it became “a part of language” the more he enveloped himself within the genre.

“When I sit down to write at this stage, after having done it for so many years, it’s just a reflection of this synthesis of various influences,” said Gray.

Born and raised in the Beach, Gray attended several local schools, including Balmy Beach, Glen Ames, and Malvern Collegiate, where he met his wife, Natalie.

Growing up with parents who were “avid music lovers,” Gray spent his childhood years in an environment where it was “very common” to gather with family for the sole purpose of listening to albums.

“We listened to music records more than we watched television,” explained Gray.

It was during his studies at Glen Ames Public School where Gray developed an affinity for music, after being introduced to his instrument of choice, the bass guitar.

“When I was in Glen Ames, there was a battle of the bands, and my friends and I wanted to do something,” said Gray.

In an odd twist of fate, his childhood obsession with the bass lines in rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine would later evolve and flourish into a deep passion for jazz music.

“They showed me Rage Against the Machine, and I became totally enamoured with it, and literally learned to play bass so that I could join the Rage Against the Machine band for the Glen Ames battle of the bands.”

Gray honed his skills as a bass guitarist at the beloved Scarborough Music, which was located at the intersection of Victoria Park and Kingston Road and closed in June 2022 after 50 years of business.

“I took bass lessons at Scarborough Music, which of course, is gone now. I had a fantastic teacher named Ivan Zilman,” said Gray. “He took my love of rock music and slowly transitioned it into a love of jazz.”

Following high school, Gray was enrolled in the renowned music program at Humber College, where he now works as a full-time professor of music production.

From student to teacher with a longstanding career and prominent accolades, the Beach-based artist has worked with several big names in the industry, including Snoop Dogg, Olivia Rodrigo, The Tragically Hip, Brandy, among many others.

Between 2015 and 2020, Gray received several nominations and awards, including a number of nominations at the Canadian Folk Music Awards for Best World Album, Best Solo Artist, as well as a Canadian Screen Award for Co-Producer of Best Original Song, and an Emerging Jazz Artist Award at the Toronto Arts Foundation.

In 2022, Gray received a Juno Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Group, for Avataar’s Worldview.

Award-winning music isn’t the only thing he’s contributed to the industry. In 2010, Gray invented and co-created the Bass Veena, a hybrid fretless bass instrument designed for Indian classical and contemporary world music performance.

With his latest album, Gray pays homage to traditional music in a modern setting, blending the serenity of Indian culture with otherworldly characteristics found in modern North American music production. The result is a fusion of sounds that complement each other in a way that both stimulates listeners’ senses and begs them to return for more.

For more information about Justin Gray, head to https://justingraysound.com/about/