Mayor Tory turns up the volume at city hall
Free concert series showcasing local acts kicked off Thursday in the rotunda
It’s about to get a little louder at city hall.
Once in a while, anyway. Mayor John Tory unveiled a new concert series titled “Live at City Hall” on Thursday afternoon that hopes to introduce Torontonians to the multitude of musical talent in their midst by staging two free shows a month in the building’s rotunda.
Husband-and-wife-fronted folkpop outfit the Young Novelists and funky fusionists the Muso Project were the first two acts to grace the new city hall stage on Thursday. Twenty-two dates are currently booked in total, with the next gig to come on Feb. 11, and Tory says another 100 local artists have already applied to perform.
“I won’t claim that it’s an original idea,” said Tory in an interview earlier in the day, conceding that Toronto pinched the concept from Austin City Council, which opens each of its meetings with a performance by local artists.
“But I think this is an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got some great talent here.’ We want to put them on a stage in one of the city’s bestknown buildings and make it avail- able to the public so the public can come out. . .
“I hope this thing will become something that will attract hundreds of people. It’s free, so the price is right. And Panamania proved that there’s an audience out there for these things.”
Clearly, Tory’s fact-finding mission to the South by Southwest festival in Austin last March — after which, among other things, he pledged that he would try to make it easier to hear music in public spaces in Toronto — has left a lasting impression. He’s already talking about moving Live at City Hall outside in May when the weather warms up.
“It just pains me to see that big, beautiful new stage we have at Nathan Phillips Square largely empty during Canadian Music Week, so we’re going to make an effort this year to have some programming there, again with local artists, so that we can take a great venue that’s close by a lot of the action and put some of those bands on a stage where they’d be proud to be,” he said.
Meantime, you still also get Toronto artists playing in your ear when you call city hall at “311” and get put on hold. Live at City Hall performers also get a plug on the City of Toronto website, which puts them in front of hundreds of thousands of potential fans a day.
“If they can click on something and hear a Toronto band and that might end up with them buying a track or two or going out to hear it, I think that’s fantastic,” said Tory.
“If we want to be a city that’s known to promote its own music talent, then we have to take these small steps to do that.”
Mike Tanner, Toronto’s recently appointed — and first — music-sector development officer, serves as host of the concert series.
His hope is that Live at City Hall becomes as accurate a mirror of Toronto’s musical diversity as possible, and he’s already encouraged all 44 councillors to keep an ear out for hot new sounds in their own wards so that the series might achieve “crosspollination between North York and Scarborough and Etobicoke as well as giving a platform for guys who are regularly playing Queen St.”
“I’d love to see some world stuff and some experimental stuff and some urban stuff and some cool indie jazz and other sorts of things,” Tanner said.