From April 30 to May 8, folks with a passion for all things creative are invited to immerse themselves in Scugog’s vibrant arts scene. The multidisciplinary arts festival, aptly named small town BIG, is set to take over 22 galleries, theatres, studios and other venues across the township. This year’s festival will feature 23 events that showcase more than 75 artists, who are collaborating with 14 different arts and culture presenters.  “People love to visit our rural town of Port Perry in Scugog, about an hour north-east of Toronto, for its arts and culture scene,” shares Marion Meyers, p ..read more

Toronto could be getting a pair of new music venues this summer. If you’ve been reading NOW over the last five years, it won’t be a surprise to hear that Toronto has a vanishing music venues problem. With rising rents, systemic barriers and vulture organizations encroaching – plus a pandemic that’s upended the whole live music industry – both performance and rehearsal spaces have been disappearing.  For those paying attention, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that the crisis became exacerbated right around the same time then-mayor Rob Ford declared Toronto a music city.  The city and its Tor ..read more

TYLER, THE CREATOR with KALI UCHIS, VINCE STAPLES and TEEZO TOUCHDOWN at Scotiabank Arena, Friday, March 11. Rating: NNNN Arena concerts are back in Toronto – and Tyler, The Creator gets the art of the arena concert. Lights, pyro, props, Broadway-worthy stage sets, a set of openers who would be worth shelling out for on their own – his show at Scotiabank Arena had all the big-stage spectacle we’ve been missing in the last two years. It was unapologetic opulence from a rapper who’s turned that into a self-conscious concept. I wasn’t sure we’d be back here so soon. It was jus ..read more

The Junos are getting a do-over. Last year’s 50th anniversary event was scheduled as a celebration at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage, but another COVID wave forced the Canadian music awards show to go remote for the second straight year. So they’re doing it again, May 15 at Bud Stage, with a full crowd (fingers crossed). Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) and Junos head Allan Reid says the idea is to turn the outdoor show into a kickoff to the summer concert season “that’s going to exist.” Canada and its music landscape are very different than they were when the Junos had their ..read more

Samuel Engelking Toronto’s music scene is awakening from its slumber. After a long Omicron nap, venues are cautiously reopening, tours are getting rescheduled and albums are belatedly rolling out. As bands and artists reacquaint themselves with audiences and each other, there’s a backlog of amazing music waiting to be heard, and it’s harder than ever to pigeonhole. From rock’s Indigenous future to genre-jumping hip-hop collectives, here’s who to keep an ear on this year. Savannah Ré THE SOUND: Unapologetic R&B with a Scarborough soul Growing up in a Jamaican household, Savannah Ré says she ..read more

For the second time, Stingray Radio has taken Flow off the airwaves at 93.5. But this time, the historic Black radio station will live on in Toronto. In a rare double-rebrand on February 14, 93.5 relaunched as Today Radio while Flow moved down the dial, taking over what used to be G98-7. The station is now known as “The All New” Flow 98.7. “It’s a little unusual we’d license a brand in the same market we’ve previously used it, but we felt it was better to keep the Flow brand alive than just to let it go, even if it strengthens one of our competitors,” says Steve Jones, SVP of brands and conten ..read more

The illuminated sign from Record Nook, the iconic Bathurst record shop run by ska legends Jackie Mittoo and Lord Tanamo, now hangs at the Rhythms And Resistance exhibit, which is paying tribute to Toronto’s Caribbean music legacy. The exhibit, presented by the Downtown Yonge BIA and the Friar’s Museum and curated by music historians Klive Walker and Nicholas Jennings, showcases photos, posters, handbills, costumes and records from calypso, reggae, soul and hip-hop musicians in Toronto. The items on display at the Shoppers Drug Mart just south of Yonge-Dundas Square include the original hand-pa ..read more

Making predictions, like making plans (i.e. buying concert tickets), is an uncertain task when it comes to music in the time of COVID. Live music returned this year, and we started to see what a post-pandemic music scene might look like in Toronto. Then Omicron hit and things started to feel a lot more like March 2020 – lockdowns, closed venues, postponed concerts, a return to virtual shows and a whole lot of frustrated musicians and fans wondering what happens next. As I’m writing this, New Year’s Eve shows and parties have mostly been cancelled or moved online, and the concert calendar for e ..read more

Needless to say, 2021 wasn’t a regular year for music in Toronto. We spent the first half of the year wondering if and when concerts would come back, then tentatively dipped our way back in when they finally did. In the meantime, artists and bands found new ways for their music to reach our ears (as with this week’s cover star Luna Li), grappled with how to distribute it and formed new relationships to their work and their communities. But they never stopped making music. This was a strong year for Toronto sounds, as you’ll see and hear below. Click on the links in these lookbacks to listen to ..read more

A ..read more