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Superstar Drake expected to perform at pricey supper club Après Noir,
It’s happening. The “6 God” is headed to the 905.
Drake makes the trek to a windblown stretch of Woodbridge on Thursday, to perform for less than 1,000 people in a most unlikely locale: the Chateau le Jardin banquet hall, which has since May successfully transformed itself once a month from a generations-old Toronto destination for weddings and bar mitzvahs into a pricey new supper club dubbed “Après Noir.”
The superstar rapper was actually supposed to headline Après Noir’s second instalment back in June but then postponed, so his appearance at the exclusive event will now serve as the grand finale to its first season.
Aubrey Drake Graham’s recent habit of blowing off gigs at the last minute — he cancelled the first of three Toronto dates on his tour with Migos at the Scotiabank Arena in August after already bumping those shows back by 10 days earlier in the month, then failed to show up to introduce the film Monsters and Men during the Toronto International Film Festival as advertised in early September — has no doubt given Après Noir’s organizers some sleepless nights along the way. Still, they’re fairly certain he won’t let them down.
“Just got off the phone with Drake,” Chateau le Jardin proprietor and Après Noir creator Carlo Parentela, who paid more than $1 million to secure the rapper for this date back in April, announced reassuringly via Instagram a few days ago. “He’s excited about being here next Thursday!!!”
Parentela’s son Julian and daughter Natasha have been handling the day-to-day running of the event for the past six months and bear Drake no ill will for postponing his June date.
“June was a big month for Drake. He actually dropped an album ( Scorpion) a day or two after he was supposed to perform here, and for any artist that’s a time when you’re very busy,” said Natasha on Wednesday. “It works out to everyone’s benefit that it’s now our show closer and he just finished a tour, so it’s better timing. That’s really all it was. We’re all ready to go now for Toronto.
“Obviously, things he’s done in the past, he had his reasons. But for tomorrow, he’s fully advanced. Our teams have been working with his teams for over a month now to confirm all of his tech requirements and all of his hospitality requirements so it’s not even a concern.”
Representatives for Drake did not respond to requests for comment.
Drake is, of course, but one element of the Après Noir “experience,” which expressly targets an “elite” clientele capable of paying upwards of $4,275 apiece for quarterly memberships in the club or as much as $25,500 for “platinum” access to the event’s “unbridled opulence” — meals created by celebrity chefs, champagne table service, caviar, art and fashion exhibitions, and a full entertainment program each evening. Past events have featured R&B singer Jennifer Hudson, Matchbox Twenty singer Rob Thomas, magician David Blaine and comedian Bob Saget.
Thursday’s bill also includes rising 905 pop star Jessie Reyez , singer Mia Martina, a cocktailhour serenade from Dr. Draw and artwork by Daniel Mazzone.
Some individual tickets were still available on the Après Noir website as of Wednesday afternoon for $950 for a four-course meal and open bar ($550 for “obstructed view” seating), and $1,850 for “executive” access. Revealingly, the most expensive “elite”-tier tickets at $2,950 a head were long gone.
The Après Noir experiment, risky though it was, seems to have realized its goal of luring folks with money to burn out to the hinterlands of Vaughan. And not just from Toronto. They’ve got regulars from Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Miami and other far-flung points.
“They’ve gone amazing,” says Natasha. “We have people who’ve been coming to every single one. Every event we’ve had, if we’ve not had a full house, we’ve had just shy of a full house.
“It’s been a lot of word-ofmouth. People who’ve come by themselves or as a couple came with another couple for the next show and then got a table for the next show, so that’s kind of the way it’s been building.”
“It definitely was a risk, of course,” adds Julian. “You don’t know how the public and how guests will respond to something of this nature. It was a new concept that we created, but from what we’ve seen — the response from the public, from our friends, from our family who’ve attended — it’s all been received very well. These past six shows, especially the Drake show that’s coming up, have given us confidence in knowing that we’re doing something that the public wants and that they like.”
Thoughts are already turning to 2019, with entertainers of Beyoncé and Andrea Bocelli’s calibre on the wish list. Sponsors want in.
If the Drake show goes off without a hitch, the Parentelas are dreaming even bigger for the future.
“What we’ve seen with this show is that it doesn’t exist in other metropolitan cities,” says Julian.
“We have people in L.A., Dallas, Miami and New York saying ‘We need this here.’ We’ve only had a small sample size of Toronto. Toronto’s been the springboard for this unique dinner-and-concert series, and what we’ve realized is we’ve got to take this thing to other cities. This thing, we want it to be worldwide. We know that people love this — dinner, a concert, the intimacy, the exclusivity. People want new experiences and Après Noir is that new experience right now.”