Latest news with #HarbourfrontCentre
CBC
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Museum of Toronto opens new exhibit on history of basketball in the city
A new basketball history exhibit has opened at Harbourfront Centre, presented by the Museum of Toronto. It explores the game's evolution in the city. The CBC's Greg Ross took a tour.
Toronto Star
25-05-2025
- Business
- Toronto Star
It's an oasis on Toronto's waterfront and it's under threat. The new CEO is making deep cuts to secure its future
Cathy Loblaw, appointed Harbourfront Centre CEO last June, is a woman of action, bringing back buskers and the skating rink, and launching a Farmer's Market and a full summer schedule of events, despite having had to cut jobs to balance the budget. In under a year, she has brought more change to the sprawling waterfront attraction than it's seen in decades: parting ways with The Power Plant art gallery and the Toronto International Festival of Authors, and ending Harbourfront's lease with the Fleck Dance Theatre, to shore up Harbourfront's precarious finances.
CBC
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Jamaican Canadian musician Jay Douglas finally gets his flowers in Play It Loud!
Play It Loud! is a new film that charts how Jamaican music became a big part of Canadian culture. The documentary centres on the influence of Jamaican Canadian singer Jay Douglas, who has been performing for almost 60 years. His life story parallels the emergence of Jamaican popular music both in Jamaica and Canada, and follows not only the birth of ska and reggae but also the origins of this country's unique Black music culture Today on Commotion, culture critics Danae Peart and Dalton Higgins join guest host Rad Simonpillai to discuss Play It Loud!, which will be available to stream on all TVO digital platforms starting this Friday. listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Official trailer for Play It Loud!: Rad: Dalton, educate us. Where do Jay Douglas's contributions to reggae and soul music sit within the larger history of musical genres in Canada? Dalton: Jay Douglas is a very interesting figure in Canadian music history in that he never really won any major awards, and he's never necessarily even had a hit record. So he's not really known like that in the commercial music realm. But what he did do for decades, since the '60s to today, he became a really strong ambassador for reggae music and soul music. And he is someone when you see him play live, he always puts on a fantastic live show that would, honestly, put a lot of artists today to shame. I would say that Jay's shining moment is, he was attached to this project called Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk & Reggae 1967-1974. It was an album put out by this American record label called Light in the Attic. I actually ended up producing the show down at the Harbourfront Centre way back in 2006…. That, to this day, is one of the largest concerts that venue has ever produced. So that goes to tell you the resonance of the tracks. He and all of these artists that had been performing from the '60s and '70s in Toronto, they came here from Jamaica: The Mighty Pope, Wayne McGhie, Jackie Mittoo — the type of influence and impact they had on Canadian music, you know? Rad: I love how just recalling that show, all of a sudden a surge of electricity just went through you, you know? Drawing on that energy, Danae, how did you feel about the doc's take on Jay Douglas's musical legacy? Danae: So, I loved it. Obviously, I have a little bit of bias. I know Jay. I've known him in the scene. I worked in radio, played his music, so I love Jay. And what it made me do is appreciate Jay as a legend in the music. The fact that Jay Douglas and his band performed at the first Caribana ever, the fact that he performed at Le Coq d'Or, which if anybody knows the history of that tavern, you'll know that not a lot of Black acts got in there, and when they did, it was usually from the States. So Jay Douglas has always been making history, and has always been making an impact in the music. But it was good to see a documentary film portray his full body of work and full impact. Now, Jay Douglas as protagonist, we are watching the development of music in Canada, Black music and the impact of Black music through his lens. And as a protagonist, he allows us to see what is this journey like? What has been this uphill battle? What has been the challenges as an artist trying to make it? And some of the fears that come with not growing in a certain way, and some of the triumphs that come with, even if you don't get an award, guess what? He is still performing. Living legend, still performing to this day. And the fact that persons looking on, younger artists can pick up on that and realize this journey is not new. Somebody else has been here. Somebody else has felt this challenge, but here's how he's gone through it. So I appreciate it as a body of work, as capturing the story of Black music in Canada whether it is reggae or soul, and the fact that it is now here for you to look at as a waymaker, as a blueprint, if you wish, for doing it.
CBC
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Those striking photos at Sankofa Square? They capture a journey of self-discovery
Since the beginning of January, an outdoor photography exhibition has been lighting up Toronto's Sankofa Square. It's called At the Conjuring of Roots, I Wished to Meet Me …, and will appear there through the end of the month. Five massive screens at the corner of Yonge and Dundas display a collection of striking portraits by Delali Cofie. The images hold their own against the jumble of billboards that dominate the intersection, and depending on your vantage point, it's possible to spy the art from blocks away. That was Cofie's own experience of seeing the show for the first time. He was walking north on Yonge, he says, when he caught sight of a photo and felt his heart skip a beat. "It was a bit unbelievable," he says, flashing back to that moment. "I turned the corner and the images were right there, you know. Everywhere." In each shot, incredible garments fill the frame, pulling all focus. They are voluminous creations that ripple with fringey layers of raffia and ruffles. In one picture, a woman lies in bed. She appears serene, lost in thought. Only her head is visible, however; a cocoon of bristles and patterned fabric has enveloped the rest of her. In another portrait, shot at night, a lone figure stands against a garden wall framed by leafy shrubs and branches. In a way, the model is camouflaged — hidden by the heavy layers of a grassy, green cloak. And yet, they demand to be seen. Their gaze is steady. Self-assured. Through the trees and shadows, their bright eyes lock on the viewer. The exhibition is appearing downtown as part of DesignTO. More of Cofie's work can be seen at another festival event, a group exhibition called Revive, which is on at the Harbourfront Centre through March 30. But for Cofie, there was something especially remarkable about seeing his large-scale photographs appear in Sankofa Square amid the crowds of Eaton Centre shoppers — the traffic, the skyscrapers and all the chaos of the city. "I was a little speechless, to be honest. And when I think about it now, I still am. Thinking about the concept of the work and the story behind it," he says, "it shows the spirit of what I was aiming for." The project, he says, "is basically an ode to self," he says — a story of becoming who we will be. Meet the artist So who is Delali Cofie? He's an artist with a busy schedule, for one. In addition to the DesignTO exhibitions, Cofie has a show at the Stewart Hall art gallery in Pointe-Claire, Que., this month. That group exhibition, Afrotopos, runs through March 30. And in early March, he'll be off to Milan, where he'll be bringing more of his work to the PhotoVogue Festival. It just goes to show how much can change in a year. This time last winter, Cofie was still a student at OCAD University. He graduated in the spring, and the photos appearing at DesignTO emerged from his award-winning thesis project. Like the show appearing at the corner of Yonge and Dundas, that series' title is At the Conjuring of Roots, I Wished to Meet Me…. The pictures were shot in Accra, Cofie's hometown in Ghana. Born in 1999, the artist was raised in Africa, but moved to Toronto in 2017 for university. Originally, his plan was to study mechanical engineering at York University, but soon, he realized his true calling was photography, and he enrolled at OCAD in 2020. By his second year at OCAD, Cofie was already working through ideas he'd realize in At the Conjuring of Roots, I Wished to Meet Me…. At first, he was interested in the masquerade traditions that exist across West Africa. He was inspired by "the magnificence of those costumes," he says, and he began thinking about how identity and the construction of self might be represented through wearing one of these incredible, layered garments. He imagined it as "this weight that you balance, that you carry around," he says. "It can be a burden, or it can be a graceful sort of carry." Clothes make the man Cofie designed the clothing that appears in his photographs. The frame-filling garb is made of raffia, a palm native to Africa. He also incorporates plenty of fabric — used fabric — which is selected for its symbolic heft. The patterns are cut from bedsheets and old clothes, things he gathered from home and also purchased secondhand. "I call them artifacts of time," he says of the material. Each finished costume is meant to be a representation of who we are as individuals, he says. "You are wearing the history that you don't necessarily see." Like a lot of students, Cofie would go back home when he could, visiting family in the summer and over the holidays. It was during such a trip in 2023 that he began developing the project in earnest. His dad, who's also an artist, was an early supporter of the idea. "It's kind of wild, but he was all for it," says Cofie. He brought his son old clothes that he could use, including the outfit he was wearing when he proposed to Cofie's mother. Together, they found traders who'd sell them raffia, and artisans who could dye it forest green and a rich blood red. They also hired a team of seamstresses to realize Cofie's designs. While those local sewers had never made masquerade costumes before, everyone threw themselves into the challenge, with the elder Cofie acting as a translator between the artist and artisans. "Although I was born and raised in Ghana, I don't speak any of the local languages," he says. "There were many hands involved in bringing the vision to life." 'A process of self-discovery' The opportunity to work so closely with his dad was one of the most meaningful aspects of the project, Cofie explains, and there's a photo at Harbourfront Centre where the two men are pictured together. They sit side by side in matching robes, as the artist turns toward his father. The elder Cofie looks straight ahead, his expression full of pride. "But I'm also controlling the camera, looking back at us," says Cofie. "It's thinking about the cyclical nature of life, and the project, and sort of searching for myself within my father." "That's not an image I could have planned for," he says. "I think that's something that really just came to me as I was working on the project and seeing how collaborative it was." "The project is about self-discovery," says Cofie, "and making the work became a process of self-discovery as well. Simply being in Accra shaped the direction of the project, he explains. "I think despite growing up there [in Ghana] my entire life, there's always been some points where I didn't necessarily fully feel connected." As a kid, he felt caught between cultures. His mom is from Nigeria; his dad is from Ghana. "We sort of just spoke English at home," he says, and there were times when he felt like a tourist in his own city. The search for "home" has been a recurring theme in his work, he says, but being back on familiar streets — spending time in his parents' home, his father's garden — shifted his perspective a bit, attuning him to the heightened emotion of returning to a place he knows well. Cofie is continuing to work on the series, and he plans to expand it with short films and more photographs later this year. He's designing additional apparel too. "[It] feels like this is a large internal adventure where I'm meeting different forms of myself," he says of the process. And he feels like a new person compared to who he was at the start of this creative journey. "Seeing the way [the series] has been received is extremely affirming," he says. "I feel like I'm starting to realize my voice."
