Recording: Holy Oak Family Singers

Artist: Holy Oak Family Singers

Songs: Greenfields [The Brothers Four cover] + The Way You Look Tonight [Betty Carter cover] + Madame George [Van Morrison cover]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Holy Oak Family Singers present), May 6, 2026.

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Luka Kuplowsky & Robin Dann - Greenfields

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Robin Dann - The Way You Look Tonight

Holy Oak Family Singers feat. Ivy Mairi - Madame George

With my work schedule the way it is, it's a rare treat to get to see the Holy Oak Family Singers in action. Unsurprisingly, their montly showcases have become local Events of Note, with the Southern Cross jam-packed very early on. Once one reaches a certain age, an event called "Our Parents' Tapes" might be attended with apprehension, as the gap collapses towards "tapes I had". We're not quite there yet, and in any case, the group brought a pretty wide range of formative we-listened-to-this-in-the-car memories.

Recording: Cici Arthur

Artist: Cici Arthur

Song: Felt in an Instant

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (TONE Presents), May 23, 2025.

Cici Arthur - Felt in an Instant

Chris Cummings is not Marker Starling — and now, he is not Cici Arthur either. The former, his longtime "solo" vehicle has now been joined by the new "group" endeavour — an effort spearheaded by Joseph Shabason and Thom Gill (who was absent for this show) to provide some lush and smooth sonic settings for Cummings' songs. Nimble and soulful, this is a formidable soft-rock powerhouse that has lead to the very tasty Way Through album, as well as a star-studded band (with Mara Nesrallah, Dorothea Paas, Phil Melanson, and Bram Gielen) bringing the songs to life.

Recording: Masahiro Takahashi

Artist: Masahiro Takahashi

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Allan Gardens Children's Conservatory (Music Gallery presents), November 9, 2024.

Masahiro Takahashi - unknown

This off-site Music Gallery show took place in one of the less-familiar wings of the Allan Gardens conservatory — not alongside the turtles or under the tropical plants but in the smaller children's conservatory space which was, at least at the moment, cleared out of plant life and serving more as an event space. (Although, to be sure, there were plants aplenty — and for sale — in the adjoining space.) Still a visually appealing (if someone sonically impure) spot for a show, and it felt like a cozy spot to lean in and listen to a couple of contrasting sets.

The night began with a trio, led by bedroom laptopist Masahiro Takahashi, here joined by Joseph Shabason (sax and fx) and Bram Gielen (fretless bass), adding lush textures to his gently-drifting pieces, creating a greenhouse-ready chill-out zone.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Joseph Shabason

Artist: Joseph Shabason

Song: 13-15

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection Festival – Day 3), September 3, 2022.

Joseph Shabason - 13-15

Returning after a couple pandemic hiatus years, the Intersection Festival made its way back to the concrete expanse of Yonge-Dundas Square, bringing abrasive and strange sounds to the wider public. Keeping to the main stage (except for Kristina Guison's circular sander art installation), this was a bit more of a stripped-down affair than years past, but the organizational caution meant things went off without a hitch. Even on a Labour Day weekend afternoon, downtown feels a little less hectic than it used to be, but it was nice to be outside and run into some familiar faces for the first time in so long.

This was my first chance to catch Joseph Shabason (and a stageful of his excellent frequent collaborators) since the release of last year's The Fellowship. This piece from the album was expanded onstage into a nice, long Hassellriffic groove (and the centrepiece of the too-short set) with tasty spotlights for Thim Gill (guitar) and Hugh Marsh (violin).

Recording: Alex Samaras

Artist: Alex Samaras

Songs: Everybody Says Don't [composer: Stephen Sondheim] + Show Me + Chinese Café [composer: Joni Mitchell]

Recorded at The Canadian Music Centre (Riparian Acoustics/CMC Presents), January 17, 2019.

Alex Samaras - Everybody Says Don't

Alex Samaras - Show Me

Alex Samaras - Chinese Café

Another astute booking from Nick Storring/Riparian Acoustics (whose curation of the CMC Presents series has recently been extended for a second season), giving vocalist Alex Samaras a chance to pull together a night of songs from the various musical worlds he spends time on. I've never seen one of Samaras' Sondheim/cabaret shows — well, except inasmuch as he brings some of that into everything he does — but this had that kind of vibe, albeit with music ranging from art-song to Meredith Monk to Morton Feldman to Thom Yorke to locals Bernice. Backing from Lara Dodds-Eden (piano) and Bram Gielen (double bass), as well as Samaras' story-telling, added to the cabaret feel, animated by Samaras' joyful presence throughout.

Recording: Joseph Shabason

Artist: Joseph Shabason

Song: Treat it Like a Wine Bar

Recorded at Array Space (Invocation Presents), January 10, 2019.

Joseph Shabason - Treat it Like a Wine Bar

Joseph Shabason's Anne can be viewed as more a development in continuity with his previous Aytche album, but there are still striking developments here. Foremost among those (and in addition to its ample technical merits) is its deeper and more personal emotional palette, weaving in fragments of interviews with his mother (the titular Anne) on the subjects of family, identity and "perfection" in the face of a degenerative illness. This special release show gained poignancy with Anne's presence, getting a chance to see her son presenting this intricate and beautiful music to a packed house.

Shabason's backing band for his hometown shows can expand and contract depending on who's available, and this night saw him being joined by Hugh Marsh (violin), Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet), Thom Gill (guitar/synth/piano), Phil Melanson (percussion), Kieran Adams (samples) and Bram Gielan (synth/bass/piano). That talented and deeply flexible group allowed a lush presentation of the material that rivalled the album's intricate arrangements. The selection here (which closed out the set as it does the album) was presented as a "placid sendoff", a gentle reminder that sometimes our difficulties can be ameliorated by looking at things in the best light.

[Joseph Shabason will be opening for Laraaji at the Toronto Spiritualist Temple on Friday, April 12th.]

Recording: Isla Craig

Artist: Isla Craig

Songs: Faraway Blue + Bold Poachers [traditional, feat. Martha Farquhar-McDonnell]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Main Hall), June 24, 2018.

Isla Craig - Faraway Blue

Isla Craig - Bold Poachers

The release of Isla Craig's The Becoming (on vinyl from Pleasence Records) felt like a worthy occasion for celebration. Perhaps because I'd been watching these songs emerge for several years now it felt especially joyful to witness this culmination and this beginning. Soulful excursions with slick, languid grooves, the tunes were delivered with a stageful of friends and close collaborators, including her band with Evan Cartwright (drums), Bram Gielen (bass) and Johnny Spence (synth) augmented by Jonathan Adjemian (synth) and Vic Cheong (backing vox) throughout. There were also guest turns from Colin Fisher on sax plus a duet with Martha Farquhar-McDonnell — the latter on a Steeleye Span-inspired number linking folksongs of the bygone forest emerald green with the folksongs of the city we're in today.

[Isla Craig will be performing at the second annual Venus Fest, on Saturday, September 22nd at The Opera House alongside Bully, Partner and Vallens.]

Recording: Joseph Shabason

Artist: Joseph Shabason

Song: Aytche

Recorded at The Baby G (TONE Festival), June 5, 2018.

Joseph Shabason - Aytche

The ensemble that Joseph Shabason has assembled to present his Aytche material live has tended to fluctuate in size and membership around the same core, but on this night, there was lots of room to explore textures and stretch out pieces with Phil Melanson, Thom Gill, Bram Gielen and Nicole Rampersaud on hand. This extended version of the album's title track contains some beautifully-lyrical work from Nicole Rampersaud (which was, itself, quite a departure from the solo sounds she had explored earlier that evening.)

Recording: Joseph Shabason

Artist: Joseph Shabason

Song: November^*

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength Winter Festival 18 – Night 3), February 18, 2018.

Joseph Shabason - November

This year's Wavelength birthday celebration was more restrained than usual, sticking to one venue for three nights and having no extra daytime activities. That left the work to transforming the events to something more than just a "regular" night at a show to scene-setters like General Chaos and Roxanne Ignatius. The festival's final night was the most musically eclectic, the acts connected by an exploratory thread.

Anyone who showed up late missed the festival's best set, with Joseph Shabason bringing another edition of his ever-shifting backup collective to the stage for some embracing ambient atmospherics. (This time out saw him backed by Nicole Rampersaud on trumpet, Thom Gill on keys, Phil Melanson on percussion, Bram Gielen on fretless bass and Kieran Adams on Octapad. These are all top-notch local musicians who you should be investigating if you don't already know their other work.) This new piece is based on a keyboard loop by Italian composer Gigi Masin.

^* Thanks to J.S. for passing along the title to this one.

[The next Wavelength Festival is already on the distant horizon, with Camp Wavelength once more contained to the mainland and landing at Garrison Common on August 18th and 19th. Meanwhile, the next few monthly shows, co-productions (as well as a cool Toronto Post-Punk in the Early ‘80s Music Talk) are all announced.]

Recording: Joseph Shabason

Artist: Joseph Shabason

Song: Neil McCauley

Recorded at Monarch Tavern, October 17, 2017.

Joseph Shabason - Neil McCauley

This evening of ambient pop was conceived by Riparian Acoustics (Nick Storring's post-Ratio vehicle for show curation) and given logistical support by Burn Down the Capital and packed the Monarch Tavern with a fairly mixed crowd. It was, in fact, at Ratio that I had seen this project in a nascent form. Now reverted back to Shabason's own name, that set a year ago, this set and the recordings on the wonderful Aytche album draw from an overlapping pool of musicians from Shabason's band DIANA and adjacent T.O. crews. On this night, the band was a true all-star unit featuring Joseph Shabason (sax, effects, keyb), Matt Smith (samples, keyb), Hugh Marsh (electric violin), Kieran Adams (percussion) and Bram Gielen (bass). As beautiful as the textures on the album are, it's even more impressive to hear it done live with the group offering studio lushness without sounding the least bit stiff or pre-programmed. The vibe that this piece aims at can be gleamed from the fact that it's named for Robert De Niro's character in Michael Mann's Heat. This live version stretches out with beautiful ambiance from March and Gielan before pulling in the rest of the players.

Recording: DIANA

Artist: DIANA

Song: Confession

Recorded at Artscape Daniels Spectrum (Venus Fest), September 30, 2017.

DIANA - Confession

The idea of a "feminist music festival" might bring to mind an earnest folkie gathering, maybe off in a forest somewhere, but this first annual event was nothing like that, using inclusive and intersectional ideals as guideposts to programming a day of wide-ranging musics. The brainchild of local musician Aerin Fogel, Venus Fest was an ambitious undertaking, presenting a dozen performances in Daniels Spectrum's spacious multi-purpose Regent Park digs. And it all came together quite wonderfully, highlighting a diverse slate of mostly local musicians and incorporating flourishes like Vanessa Rieger's live-mixed visuals. With this first festival completed, there's a new "sessions" series starting up, and lots of energy to build on the positive vibes this day released.

Rolling a half-dozen members deep, there's a lot of moving parts to get set up quickly for this group to play a festival set. And though there were a few points where it looked like several of the members were adjusting and fixing things on the fly, their lush, layered sound cruised like a smooth oiled machine. Only backing vocalist Gary Beals wasn't on hand from when I last saw this expanded lineup, but that left more room for Ivy Mairi to dance and support Carmen Elle's vocals.

Recording: DIANA

Artist: DIANA

Songs: Moment of Silence + Slipping Away

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength SEVENTEEN – Night 1), February 17, 2017.

DIANA - Moment of Silence

DIANA - Slipping Away

I hadn't seen this group in action since the release of sophomore album Familiar Touch and their evolution into a seven-piece smooth-groove machine. Insisting on playing with the expanded lineup means that the album's lush arrangements are fully able to breathe on stage, especially with top-notch players like Thom Gill and Ivy Mairi in the fold. But the real star of DIANA 2.0 is vocalist Gary Beals — if Carmen Elle is the pitcher putting in a strong start, Beals is the lights-out closer, sealing the deal with a joyful rush of energy. A triumph of going big and amping things up without losing the attention to detail in the musical textures, this was a pretty glorious set.

Recording: Isla Craig

Artist: Isla Craig

Song: Gregory

Recorded at Prairie Drive Park (Feast in the East 58), July 9, 2016.

Isla Craig - Gregory

A beautiful day out in Scarborough. Thanks to Toronto Arts Foundation's Arts in The Parks, Feast In The East received the resources to host this free event which brought art, food and music to the rolling hills of Prairie Drive Park. By offering a free meal and inviting park patrons of all ages to explore and interact with the installations, this felt like a most gracious imposition on the normal order of the park, which is obviously well-loved and well-used by inhabitants of the neighbouring highrises — a sharing of the space instead of a culture blitz from outside. An excellent day out, this had a mellow and friendly vibe. Toronto needs so much more of this: having "culture" dispersed more widely throughout this sprawling city, giving locals a chance to see something that might not normally happen in their neighbourhood while giving seekers a chance to hang out in hitherto-unexplored pockets. It makes the city feel bigger and more cozy all at once.

After a recent Continental Drift-style excursion, Isla Craig was back with her cosmic voyaging crew (Bram Gielen, bass; Johnny Spence, synth; Evan Cartwright, percussion), offering some soulful sounds as day turned to evening and a crescent moon started to rise over Crescent Town. Ivy Mairi came up to sing backing vox on this and a few other tunes, while Martha Farquhar-McDonnell joined in on "Bold Poachers", which was recently featured on FitE's cookbook/compilation.

Recording: Ben Gunning

Artist: Ben Gunning

Song: Destructive

Recorded at Smiling Buddha (Silent Shout Festival – Night 1), December 4, 2014.

Ben Gunning - Destructive

Although they'd stepped away from presenting live music, Silent Shout returned for a two-night celebration to mark their fifth anniversary. Taking over the Smiling Buddha for two nights gave the site's designer Roxanne Ignatius a chance to re-imagine the space, with a deconstructed disco ball twirling above clouds and webby fabric tendrils. Plus, downstairs there was a gallery of her consistently-excellent show posters, going right back to the series' beginning when it had to spell out its mandate of "EVIL DISCO / GLOOMY ELECTRO / DEATHLY SYNTHPOP". And though there was a retrospective element to the whole affair, the music was decisively forward-looking, including a couple bands making their debuts.

It was quite pleasing to see Ben Gunning's new Massive Love album being championed by Silent Shout. Though it undoubtedly includes some bum-wiggling grooves, its yacht rock sound arguably owes more to Steely Dan than The Knife. The recorded versions of the songs do indeed have some slick electronic undertones, though live that's subsumed somewhat into the smooth sounds of Gunning's all-star backing band, which includes DIANA's Kieran Adams (drums) and Joseph Shabason (sax) plus Bram Gielen (bass), Thom Gill (synth) and Michael Davidson (vibes) plus Robin Dann and Alanna Stuart (backing vox). Playing after a lot of the crowd split following the headlining set, there was room on the dancefloor for those who stuck behind to see this rather astonishing band in action.

Recording: Isla Craig

Artist: Isla Craig

Song: The Becoming

Recorded at Jam Factory ("Feast in the East 47"), April 4, 2015.

Isla Craig - The Becoming

"I'm not sure if this is a song or a vibe," Isla said a couple months back when I first heard this song (and its snaky guitar groove) in a stripped-down solo performance. But in the hands of a new backing band (which included Bram Gielen on bass, Johnny Spence on synth and Evan Cartwright on percussion) it was most assuredly a song. Debuting a set of new material written on guitar, there were fabulous arrangements throughout that accentuated Craig's soulful grooves (and leavened the stew with a subtle dash of reggae). The band also didn't rush through the songs, letting them all simmer for five or six minutes apiece. After staying on the down-low for the past while while these songs gestated, this was definitely a triumphant launch of a new phase for Craig.

Recording: Swiss Dice

Artist: Swiss Dice

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Mercer Union ("PLATFORM: Music at Mercer"), May 30, 2014.

Swiss Dice - unknown

Full review to follow. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Swiss Dice. Of course there they just call them "dice".

I confess going into this gig I hadn't done any research on the opening band, so I was most pleased to see some familiar faces (Kieran Adams, Bram Gielen, Ben Gunning, Blair Johnsrude) taking the stage. Pitched somewhere between Mannerisms' "fuzak" and I Am Robot and Proud's techno-optimistic synth jingles, Swiss Dice brought some precisely-ordered instrumental funk squiggles. Their mighty proficiency and total commitment on stage showed that tackling a genre with a slightly cheeze-y taint to it was done so joyfully as to make it irresistible. [You can check out a couple tunes on their soundcloud.]

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!