Blair Packham, Program Director
Born in 1959, Blair Packham began writing songs at the age of seventeen. After playing in a few cover bands, Blair landed a job with Toronto recording studio Comfort Sound, then building a stellar reputation for its mobile recording truck. It was while learning how to be an audio engineer and producer, Blair formed his first serious band, The Jitters, who went on to record two albums for Capitol-EMI Music of Canada. By 1991 and the band’s breakup, they had had five charting hits (including “Last of the Red Hot Fools” and “The Bridge Is Burning”) and a Juno nomination. It was also during the 1990s that Blair became involved with the Songwriters Association of Canada, eventually becoming the organization’s vice-president, and a passionate advocate for the rights and privileges of songwriters.
Turning his attention to television and film music, Blair has written countless themes and scores for broadcasters such as TSN, Global Television, Discovery Channel, CBC Newsworld, TVO, CTV and others.
In 2005, Blair co-founded, with Rik Emmett, the Humber Summer Songwriting Workshop, and has been the driving force behind the workshop, which became SongStudio in 2009, ever since. In addition to workshop-planning and teaching songwriting at two Toronto post-secondary schools (Humber College and Seneca College), Blair continues to write songs as well as music for TV and film (Teletoon’s “Spliced” being a popular recent example). He also co-hosted a weekly Toronto music-magazine-style radio show (Newstalk1010’s “In the Studio”) for years.