John Gilmore

John Gilmore was born in Montreal in 1951, and grew up in a unilingual English-speaking family in Deux Montagnes, Quebec. His parents were from British Columbia and Saskatchewan. After apprenticing as a journalist in Bridgend, Wales, for two years, he worked as a newsroom editor at the Montreal Gazette, and later at The Canadian Press news agency and Radio Canada International. 

In 1981, Gilmore gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Jazz Studies from Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of two books of Canadian jazz history: Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal (1988, 2011) and Who’s Who of Jazz in Montreal: Ragtime to 1970 (1989). Other books include the experimental novels Head of a Man (2011) and The Broken Notebooks (2018), and a translation of Quebec film-maker Bernard Émond's novel 8:17 pm, rue Darling (2014). Gilmore has also worked as a scholarly editor, a music programmer for CBC Radio, and an English language teacher, including at UBC's English Language Institute, Vancouver Community College, and schools in England and Brazil. 

From 2008 to 2017 he lived in Berlin, Germany. In 2018 he resumed living full-time in Montreal, where he is an affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University. An oral history book about the birth of free jazz and free improvised music in Quebec is forthcoming. His personal and professional papers, including jazz history research and extensive recorded interviews with musicians, are held in the John Gilmore fonds at Concordia University Library Special Collections.