Duck Pond Floating to the Top
Illustration by Baran Forootan.
Kingston, Ontario, a town celebrated for its lively music scene, breeds, nurtures, and brings together a multitude of incredibly talented musicians. Duck Pond is rapidly breaking through Kingston’s music scene as the hottest up-and-coming student band right now. Comprised of Sofia Leach, 20 (lead singer); Michael Ambra, 21 (guitar); Megan Schierau, 22 (horns); Lee Sadja, 22 (keys); Marcus Tantakoun, 23 (bass); and Sam (Robert David) Alexander, 25 (drums) – Duck Pond is an amalgamation of talent perfectly explained by Aristotle’s idea that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
At the heart of that collective energy is Leach. A born-musician, from singing and being classically trained as a young child, picking up the piano and violin when she was just six, and having added guitar to her repertoire when she was ten. Her mom’s affinity for music pushed Leach into music making it her second nature for as long as she can remember.
Ambra has been playing the guitar for almost all of his life, seventeen years to be exact. When he was just six years old, his (super musically inclined) parents had surprised him with an electric guitar, and “the rest is history!” he said. Ambra had done some lessons, but most of his talent comes from being self-taught and learning whatever songs he was enjoying listening to at the time. Music has not only given Ambra a magnitude of opportunities to connect with other musicians and friends, but has just played a very important role throughout his entire life.
Schierau started on the piano at just five years old, but never fell into it the way she would later on with the horns. She is currently a music student at Queen’s and is one of just two trombone majors in the entire school. As a career musician who had strictly studied classical music, she had never done anything of this sort before joining a band. Schierau has been playing the trumpet in recent years for its smoother translation into cover-band-type music, and has also started getting into rapping. “I think there is something very whimsical about the idea of me rapping, I think I'm the last person you might expect.”
Sadja started playing on his mother’s baby grand piano during the summer when he was 15 years old. With his mom urging him to pick up a hobby to pass the time productively, he turned to music and the keys became his “home base” instrument. He is loving his more recent journey with the guitar, and is constantly singing.
Tantakoun started playing bass lines on his guitar in his second year of university, and soon after that winter break, he came back to school “cracking” as Alexander put it. He had also played a little bit of piano when he was young, but most definitely found his way with the bass guitar.
Alexander got his hands on a Pearl Drum catalog one day in sixth grade and asked his parents for a kit one Christmas. He started playing in big bands in Ottawa throughout high school, and was in a constant state of writing and playing. This would soon take away from his love for the drums, leading to his decision to not study music academically, and realize that he finds the most fulfillment and joy in just playing good music with a good band.
From their hometowns stretching all over Ontario and even spanning all the way to Hong Kong, to their programs of study at Queen’s hardly having any overlap, it feels kismet that these six came together to form Duck Pond back in the summer. It would start with Tantakoun and Alexander, who were roommates back in their second and third years at Queen’s, where they would discover one another’s musical talents and start the band Ducks in the Attic with a few other friends. Schierau joined in thanks to their former band’s lead singer being a coworker of hers, coincidentally looking for someone to play horns for them. And later, she and Tantakoun would meet Ambra through a Queen’s club and continue playing together past the dismantling of Ducks in the Attic due to other member’s graduations.
It felt like the right time for the four of them to get a more defined band back together, so they messaged Leach knowing she was, what some would call, a “free-agent” in the student band community after her run with band Jinx in Winter, 2025. Wanting to round the band out with a keyboardist, it was by perfect coincidence that Sadja had formally met Tantakoun at a thrift store in Kingston after knowing one another as mutuals do in a small university town. And here they had it!; wanting to distinguish themselves from their former band, Alexander threw out the new name “Duck Pond” one night, and it stuck. While seemingly irrelevant to their story as a new band, the organic nature of how they came together not only by chance, but through their shared love for music, is an attribution to how often it brings humans together, and in some instances like this one, to create absolute magic.
Being a new band of six young adults, all busy students who have a bunch of other individual quests going on, Duck Pond is in a developmental stage regarding their ethos. Their spirit lies in being “light-hearted and fun,” taking as much time as they can to come together solely for the fact that they all love playing music most with one another – Sadja says, he is just “geeked to play high level music with other humans.” As they progress through finding out who they are as a band, anyone getting the privilege to attend their gigs could tell you how their sonic personalities continue to blend more and more together into a distinct sound, shaped by each member’s attitude and essence. With each set comes more dynamic arrangements, increasingly poetic setlists, and an exponentially growing group chemistry.
So, what are you actually hearing at a Duck Pond show? “A little bit of everything” they all agreed on. The autonomy of being a student cover band allows this group to do what they do best, and that’s playing whatever is inspiring them at the moment. Being not only a group of talented musicians, but a group with very good taste, Duck Pond has found the perfect balance between playing songs that their crowds know and playing the stuff they want for the sole purpose of sharing music and having fun doing it. With any given set, Duck Pond curates a distinct vibe. At MUSE Magazine’s Mini Desk on January 22nd, 2026, they brought groovy, funky energy, whereas a few weeks later on February 12th, they maintained the funk all while diving into some grungier tones. Notably, the band’s insane cover of Geese’s ‘Trinidad’ had everyone in the crowd head-banging and scream-singing. Their “alt-rock kissing funk” sound Schierau calls it, is a developing formula that Duck Pond fans are coming to know and love, because watching this band have that much fun with one another on stage makes everyone in a room want to join in.
The student band scene in Kingston is prosperous like that of no other university town in Canada. Being a student at Queen’s since post-COVID where it was a little slower with around five bands on the scene at the time, Alexander recalls watching the music scene rapidly bloom back into being reminiscent of his parent’s days in Kingston when the Hip were getting started, and The Glorious Sons were gigging all over. Inherently, it is an arts town where “opportunities present themselves in kind of a special way [for student bands]… it’s very rich” Schierau says. Additionally, Duck Pond raves about the camaraderie they have experienced within this community among all the student bands. There is no feeling of competition, because simply if you are good, then other bands want you to join them in playing on their ticket. Leach commented on this saying “it just happened overnight since our last gig” that bar managers and other bands started reaching out for them to come play more and more throughout the city.
As for what’s next for the super talented and multifaceted Duck Pond, the future is still taking shape. The group is super interested in starting to write some original stuff and are hopeful that once they find the time, they will be able to find out what creative process works best for them as a collective. Each one of them has a different range of summer plans making the future of Duck Pond look a little ambiguous. While staying optimistic about the potential of working together on music throughout their respective summer plans, Duck Pond is living in the moment right now, feeding not only their souls through the music, but everyone’s who gets the chance to catch ‘em live.
Honorable Mentions from Duck Pond: Queen’s Players, Ottawa’s big band scene, parents, Mo Kelly (of The Clay Pigeons), Michael Cera, and Addison Rae.