Bless the good souls at the Toronto Transit Commission. They’re providing all of us art-lovers with free rides this weekend.
TTC will run two buses this weekend every half hour, between the Distillery District and the Harbourfront Centre, with a stop at Union Station in between.
So, you just checked out Carnivalissima and you’re ready to head to the Luminato Poetry Slam Semi-Finals at the Distillery? Hop on the Luminato Express at Queen’s Quay West. You just learned how to breakdance at the Distillery’s Breakdance Workshop and now you want to get your masque on at Carnivalissima’s opening Masquerade Ball? Head to the Mill Street Entrance of the Distillery and be on your way.
The buses will run tonight from 6 p.m. to midnight, Saturday, June 9 from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday, June 10 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
And just like all of the events at Carnivalissima and Luminato at the Distillery, the buses are absolutely free of charge.
Categories: carnivalissima · celebrations · dance · distillery · luminato · music
The sylvan decor of the Winter Garden Theater might serve as a great setting for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its columns disguised as trees, and ivy hanging from the ceiling. This weekend, though, its stage was home to three comfortable chairs, two tables, and three luminaries.
Philip Glass and Leonard Cohen sat on stage for an hour Saturday afternoon for a conversation with New York Times art critic John Rockwell about Book of Longing, Glass’s interpretation of Cohen’s recently published poetry volume of the same name.
Both artists agreed that the pairing is more unlikely that it might seem at first. Cohen compared it to a bumblebee, which flies deftly despite the appearance that it isn’t aerodynamic at all. Glass used a different analogy.
“It’s as if you had the ingredients to make a pizza, and you ended up with a souffle,” he said.
“It’s like that iceberg that crashed into that museum,” Cohen said, referring to the new Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum. “There’s something beautiful about this catastrophe. Something beautiful has emerged that is better than both of us.”
Book of Longing completes its run tonight, Sunday June 3, at 7 PM in the Elgin Theater.
Categories: celebrations · leonardcohen · music · philipglass
When he was young in the 60s, Jerry Miskolczi used to listen to the artists whose album covers he still collects avidly. It wasn’t until the 80s that he started collecting as a hobby.
It was at the Lake Shore Inn in Toronto, a place that no longer exists. Saturday, in the Gallery of Memories section of the Summer of Love attraction in Yorkville, he displayed a full rack of records that might seem obscure to foreign eyes. But bands like Jack London and the Sparrows eventually became Steppenwolf and Buffalo Springfield, and The Staccatos became the Five Man Electrical Band.
“I have slowed down in my collecting,” Miskolczi said with a smile. “I’m not obsessive.”
In the stall next to him, Nicholas Jennings offers his book, “Before the Gold Rush,” on the history of Yorkville in the 1960s.
“It’s every bit the equivalent of the history of Greenich Village or Haight-Ashbury in those days,” he said. “It’s a history that needs to be celebrated.” Indeed: Where there are now sushi restaurants and a Williams-Sonoma, in the 60s there were houses full of hippies and musicians, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. A nearby parking lot is the one Mitchell famously refers to in her song “Big Yellow Taxi.”
That Saturday, Yorkville was half thoroughfare, half amphitheater. People got their faces painted as Sylvia Tyson sang about The Night The Chinese Restaurant Burned Down. For one day, it all came back to us.
Categories: celebrations · music · yorkville
