An Evening with Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood (Friday): We’re pretty excited to see these stars of Drew Carey’s Improv-a-ganza and Whose Line Is It Anyway? take the Roy Thomson Hall stage this Friday night and clearly so are you! Check out the excellent contest entries over at our The Colin & Brad Contest which ended just yesterday. Thanks to all of those who participated in the contest, we had a lot of fun reading your comments and appreciate hearing from you. Congratulations to Laura D, Jonathan Low, and Joe. Each won a DVD copy of Two Man Group and tickets to Friday evenings show. Called “Two Men. No Script.”, the show is absolutely and entirely improvised and without a doubt hilarious.
Melissa Etheridge (Friday): Melissa Etheridge is legendary – having earned fifteen Grammy Award nominations, one Academy Award, selling twenty-seven million albums worldwide, and most recently appearing as St. Jimmy in the Broadway musical American Idiot. This Times & Transcript article transcribes a heart to heart with Etheridge and notes that the “singer’s voice becomes noticeably animated when talk turns to her first Broadway experience” and Etheridge calls it one of the “Top 10 experiences of [her] life.” The current tour is in support of her latest album, Fearless Love. Winner of no less than three JUNO Awards, Serena Ryder joins Etheridge as her special guest for the concert. The pair will also be CONTINUE READING >
Just last week, we announced that the Pixies would be hitting Massey Hall in April. If you’re just learning this now, fear not, we’ve just announced a second show! Check out the event page for more details on their Doolittle tour to feature all the songs and related b-sides from their 1989 classic.
But wait! There’s more! We’ve also just announced that a recently reunited Lowest of the Low will perform at Massey Hall on May 7. The Lowest of the Low have also just released the Deluxe re-mastered 20th anniversary edition of Shakespeare My Butt… in CD/DVD combo form so you can get your fix of classics “Rosy and Grey” and “Salesmen, Cheats and Liars” until May.
The xx(Wednesday): This one is a hot ticket, friends. In fact, at the top of the month, The xx were honoured with the prestigious Barclaycard Mercury Prize. Now The xx are touring their debut album, for which they won the prize, across North America and it sounds like it will be their last tour for quite some time. Tickets to Wednesday’s show just not enough to satiate your need for all things xx-related? CultureMob recently wrote about the group and their auctioning off of their signature X lightboxes for charity. You can check it out for yourself on eBay.
YOU SHOULD KNOW
If you’ve been following us on Twitter (@soundboardTO), you may have seen the recent tweet about the time change for the Mayoral Arts Debate coming up tomorrow (Wednesday, September 29 – new schedule: Doors open at 5:00 pm and debate itself is from 6:00 to 7:30 pm). All of the leading mayoral candidates will be there and the event is moderated by John Tory. This municipal election is an important one and if you’re an artist, an arts worker, an arts supporter, or a fan of the arts in the T-dot – you’ll want to be well-advised of the candidates’ platform on arts in this city in advance of election day on October 25. Also worth checking out: ArtsVote has a great Councillor Report Card.
ACCOLADES
Just last Monday, the fifth annual Polaris Music Prize Gala took place in Toronto featuring performances by each of the ten shortlisted bands, of course, culminating in a grand jury emerging to crown Karkwa the winners of the 2010 award. You can watch the awards show over on Much Music.
Meanwhile, you may recall us having mentioned here on the Buzz NxEW’s 2nd annual Shadow Polaris Prize – a concurrent awarding process to the Polaris Prize (as the name would indicate) with the winner determined this time by reader vote (but once again decided solely on artistic merit and not on album sales). Congratulations go out to The Wooden Sky for taking home the virtual hardware on this one! The Wooden Sky is currently touring across Canada with Yukon Blonde and performs in Toronto on November 6 at Lee’s Palace.
ACCOLADES
The Toronto Arts Council has announced the finalists for this years Toronto Arts Foundation Awards. The recipients will be recognized at the Mayor’s Arts Award Luncheon on Friday October 8. One of the awards that are handed out (bi-annually) is the Roy Thomson Hall Award of Recognition, which honours outstanding achievement in the development of the Arts in our community. The finalists for this years award are:
Lydia Adams, Artistic Director of Amadeus Choir and Elmer Iseler Singers Art of Time Ensemble Jose Ortega, Artistic Director of Lula Music and Arts Centre
Congratulations on all of your hard work and contributions and best of luck in October!
JUST ANNOUNCED
Japanese metal band X Japan, have sold an astounding 30 million albums over their almost 30 year career. After recently performing at this years Lollapalooza in Chicago, the group has announced their first ever North American tour which will stop in at our very own Massey Hall on October 7 . Their single “I.V.” was a featured track from the film SAW IV, which we think is cool because we are featured in the upcoming, SAW 3D!
Toronto guitar fans will certainly be excited to hear that it was announced Friday Joe Satriani will perform at Massey Hall on December 8. He’ll be supporting his forthcoming album, Black Swan and the Wormhole Wizards. If you pre-order the album from his website, you’ll also receive an autographed copy, (presumably in the form of a CD in the mail – and not with the digital version of the album!) But still, a pretty cool incentive for fans to buy a hard copy of his anticipated Full Length.
WEB WATCH
Speaking of incentives to buy music, check out U2s manager, Paul McGuinness and his recent editorial in the UK edition of GQ, discussing the future of the music business. No doubt it’s interesting and exciting times as the business continues to CONTINUE READING >
In the lower level of Massey Hall you’ll find ‘Centuries,’ a fully-stocked bar you can visit pre-show and at intermission of most performances. The room is filled with artefacts illustrating the admirable history of Massey Hall, perhaps most notably the “Decade Panels” that line the entrance corridor to ‘Centuries.’ Starting with 1894-1904, a panel is present for each decade since Massey Hall opened. The panels feature news articles, photographs, programmes and other paraphernalia that aim to give a slice of life at Massey Hall from that period in history. In this column, we look at each decade and highlight some of the items included in these panels. Of course, for a more in-depth look, next time you’re at Massey for a show, head on over to ‘Centuries’ and check them out. This week, we take a look at 1964 – 1973, the eighth in a series of eleven tributes to Massey Hall’s glorious history.
Massey Hall 1964 – 1973
This decade panel perfectly represents the true turning point both in popular music in general and at Massey Hall specifically.
Folk music is clearly in the forefront of the Toronto scene. Many performances during this time were from now-legendary folk stars such as Stompin’ Tom Connors, Ian and Sylvia, Anne Murray, Cat Stevens, and James Taylor (who we just saw perform on the Oscars). Joni Mitchell “captivate[d] a packed Massey Hall” and Neil Young performed his epic 1971 concert which recently became available as audio and video recordings.CONTINUE READING >
For the past few weeks we’ve been reading a lot of year-endlists, and we finally thought that we should get in on the action ourselves. We decided to canvas all the staff here at the Halls, to get some nominations for the best shows of the year.
When you spend all day every day planning and attending concerts it can be far too easy to become jaded, inured to the artistry with which you’re surrounded. That’s the beauty of the end-of-year round-up: it forces you to look back and appreciate.
Enough with the chatter! On to the list.
Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall staff agree, the top show of 2009 was Cecilia Bartoli (March) in a landslide. Honourable mentions go to Fleet Foxes (August) and Aretha Franklin (November). CONTINUE READING >
WEB WATCH
This time of year is renown not just for its holidays but for its year-end lists. They are fun, they provide fodder for friendly disputes around the water cooler or at the bar, and they provide a nice sense of order to the year/decade/century/millennium that has passed. Last week we looked at what Rolling Stone and Billboard thought of the decade based, respectively, on logarithms and sales reports. This week we thought we’d check out some more local and Canadian based lists. CONTINUE READING >
Soundboard is the official community of musicians, music fans, and friends of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Canada. It’s your behind-the-scenes source for related music news, recommendations, and rewards.
Massey Hall 1964 – 1973
