of United Church of Canada minister Dr. Reverend Bill Wells. At age 11, he was in a wheelchair unable to walk for two years with Perthes' disease. Wells attended Adam Scott CVI, learned to play several instruments, and joined many musical ensembles in his hometown from the local orchestra to bar bands to being a church organist/choir director, as well as DJing dances and presenting a weekly radio show on Trent University Radio CFFF-FM. He studied classical piano, drums, pipe organ, orchestral percussion and music theory at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music. At age 15, Wells was awarded the top prize out of all categories in the Peterborough Kiwanis Music Festival, the Founders Award, and represented Peterborough twice at the Kiwanis Music Provincial Finals for the province of Ontario. At age 17, he attended the Humber College Jazz Music Program in Toronto as a piano major. Career After moving from Peterborough to Toronto at age 17, Wells worked as a live and studio musician with Canadian musicians Rob McConnell and Kim Mitchell. He joined Kim Mitchell's band at age 19. Wells recorded keyboards and backing vocals on Mitchell's Rockland, toured Canada several times with the band, and won the award for Best Keyboardist at the 1990 Toronto Music Awards. Wells was awarded a Canada Council arts grant to study in California with Clare Fischer, composer and string arranger for Prince. He traveled to Los Angeles at age 21 with the intention of returning to Canada, but Fischer began recommending Wells as a pianist. Wells joined k.d. lang's band soon afterward, performing with her on the 1993 Grammy Awards where she won Best Pop Female Vocal. His first recorded song as a songwriter was with Aerosmith on the double platinum Nine Lives, followed by "The Reason" on Celine Dion's 31 million selling album, Let's Talk About Love. DreamWorks executive Lenny Waronker tapped Wells in 2001 to produce Rufus Wainwright. Songwriter Kara DioGuardi started collaborating with Wells in 2003. Wells then produced, mixed and played most of the instruments on Mika's 6 million selling #1 debut album Life In Cartoon Motion. In 2007, Wells produced both Timbaland's and OneRepublic's version of the song, "Apologize". The song ranked number 50 on the list of the Billboard Hot 100's All-Time Top Songs list from the chart's first 50 years. It stayed at number one for eight consecutive weeks on the Billboard Pop 100 chart,