The Ontario government has announced several surprise end-of-fiscal-year funding bonuses to a variety of arts organizations and the Luminato festival is one of the luckiest winners with an award of $15M to maximize its long-term potential, including the creation of new works and securing major bookings.
The arts festival, now going in to its second year this June, won critical acclaim and favourable international press with its ambitious and highly successful debut in ’07. This year, Luminato includes a variety of music themes in its multi-disciplinary festival schedule in Toronto, June 6-15.
Included in this category, Ashley MacIsaac is part of a tribute to our Scottish roots; a Queen Street festival component has Johnny & the G-Rays, The “B” Girls, Mary Margaret O’Hara and the Parachute Club; a funk night includes Morris Day & The Time; in the jazz category there is 14 year-old jazz darling Nikki Yanofsky (pictured above), and The Count Basie Orchestra; and there is an as yet unspecified line-up of young Turks set to pay homage to the old masters of song in a Massey Hall event billed as “The Canadian Songbook”.
Laurie Anderson is also a marquee name at Luminato, performing a song cycle that plumbs lighthearted themes such as tragedy, fear, and the modern day politics of information and security. The work is entitled Homeland and she unwinds at the Danforth Music Hall.
And Joni Mitchell has mixed-media canvases offering a poetic discourse on humanity’s struggle with itself on display at the AGO.
A complete line-up of events can be found by clicking on the Luminato link.
