The new home of new sounds
It’s not quite a Top o’ the Senator revival, but this venue promises a cosy home for up-and-coming musical talent
Live music is coming to the top of the Senator — and this time we’re talking about the actual top of the Senator, not the address one door north of and one floor up from the venerable Victoria St. diner where dearly departed jazz club Top o’ the Senator flourished for 15 years before dimming its lights for good in 2005.
The newly minted Senator Winebar has been what owner Bobby Sniderman describes as “a dingy office space” on the second storey of 249 Victoria St., in which he’s run the Senator restaurant since purchasing the 150-year-old building in 1984. Now, at a time when Toronto has spent the better part of two years reeling from the closure of one live venue after another — Kensington Market haunt Graffiti’s earlier this month became the latest to fall, joining a list of shuttered small-scale music destinations that already includes the Hoxton, the Holy Oak, Studio Bar, the Central, Soybomb HQ, Tattoo, D-Beatstro, the upstairs room at the old Rancho Relaxo and, of course, the storied Silver Dollar Room — it has been transformed into a sexy little second-storey boîte that will open on March 15 as an intimate showcase spot for eclectic, up-and-coming talent as well as a source of au courant culinary, cocktail and dessert offerings supplied by chef Paul Laforet (formerly of Ursa and the Drake), “cocktail savant” Lorenzo Offidani and pastry whiz Steve Song.
It’s not a gigantic space, just an ornately appointed, 24-seat dining room with an overall capacity that tops out around 40 people. But that’s sort of the point, according to Sniderman, who’s dipping his feet back into the world of Toronto nightlife after being “deeply heartbroken” at the loss of Top o’ the Senator due to “circumstances beyond our control” 12 years ago, when he lost the property next door that also formerly housed the offshoot Senator Steakhouse and is now home to the Jazz Bistro.
“The Top o’ the Senator was only 100 seats, and some of the most memorable moments for me being there — because I saw everybody who performed there — and the memories that people tell me about were probably from a Tuesday or a Wednesday night when there were 10 people in the club and they got to sit around in front of the stage and hear Diana Krall play when she was completely unknown, or Shirley Horn or Cecil Taylor,” says Sniderman, the eldest son of Sam “the Record Man” Sniderman. “What we’re creating here is not gonna be that much different from what people would have experienced at Top o’ the Senator on a Tuesday or Wednesday night.”
In charge of the Senator Winebar’s music programming is esteemed local music journalist and historian Nicholas Jennings, author of the just-issued Gordon Lightfoot biogra- phy, Lightfoot, but also 1997’s Before the Gold Rush, an authoritative survey of the ’60s-into-’70s Toronto scene that used to extend from Yorkville’s Riverboat Coffee House down Yonge St. through such gone-butnot-forgotten venues as the Colonial Tavern, the BlueNote and Le Coq d’Or.
Jennings, who grew friendly with Sniderman during their tireless (and eventually successful) common efforts to preserve the old Sam The Record Man sign that used to be a Yonge St. landmark, envisions the Senator Winebar as something “between a music salon and a speakeasy, with everything from classical duos and acoustic soul to barrelhouse blues” on the bill.
Blues pianist Julian Fauth will be a weekly fixture at the 1920s Heintzman upright piano tucked away in the room’s southwest corner across from a Prohibition-era bar sourced from Cleveland, and will entertain at the Winebar’s opening alongside harmonica player Ken Yoshioka, but the plan is to showcase as wide a variety of music as possible. The only real guiding principle at the moment is to keep the music acoustic.
“The piano is central to the space, but we’re not restricting ourselves to pianists,” Jennings says. “There could be a country-blues guitarist. There could be an accordion player playing Gypsy polkas. There could be a singer who’s channelling Billie Holliday. It can run the gamut . . . Bobby’s the owner. I’m just his music guy. I’m just gonna keep feeding Bobby suggestions because Toronto has a huge music community of artists who are performing every genre under the sun.
“I think this space will lend itself to brand-new artists who are just ripe for discovery, as well as established artists who are looking for a unique space to do their thing in.”
“It’s not a piano bar, it’s not a lounge,” Sniderman says. “We want to be distinctive, we want to be able to showcase interesting talent that’s sort of ‘coming up’ and give them a place to perform where they can be heard and appreciated for what they’re doing.”
For the moment, there will be music two nights a week in the space on Fridays and Saturdays, although the idea of soundtracking Sunday brunch is appealing to Sniderman, too. If all goes smoothly, the programming will expand throughout the week as time goes on. Certainly, when Massey Hall reopens (after a projected two years of transformation set to begin this spring) as a triple-headed venue space capable of operating seven days a week in various capacities, there will be a lot more musical activity in the area, and the Senator Winebar should be able to secure its own niche within that hustle and bustle. There really isn’t another room like it in Toronto.
“Obviously, there are all kinds of ways to experience live music, but I think a small, intimate setting is something that we need more of in this town. That’s why I was so thrilled when Bobby brought me up here and told me his dream, because it came at a time when I, like a lot of people, was really mourning and lamenting the closings and the deaths of so many live-music venues,” Jennings says.
“I just think about the times I’ve discovered music that’s had a huge impact on me, and more often than not it’s been in an intimate space. It can be in a muddy field at a massive festival, but for me it tends to be at closer quarters. I remember seeing Lhasa de Sela next door at the Top o’ the Senator. I remember seeing Rufus Wainwright at C’est What?. I remember being in Berlin and catching an American artist, Pokey LaFarge, in the tiniest of bars and just being blown away.
“I saw C.W. Stoneking in the basement of the Drake Hotel with 30 to 40 people, just like what this room will be. Obviously it has a lot to do with the artists, but all that music has had a huge impact on me because of the space.”