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Please Vote: NOW Toronto Readers’ Choice Awards 2016

Posted on August 26, 2016November 8, 2016 by admin

In the midst of our restoration and renovation, The Great Hall is very honoured to have been nominated again as a 2016 NOW Toronto Readers’ Choice Awards finalist, in the “Music: Best Concert Hall” category.

You pick the best of the city! It’s time to vote for The Great Hall and the other best of Toronto nominees across 6 categories and 180+ awards.

After getting more than 20,000 nominations for the best personalities and businesses across the city, NOW Toronto has posted the final contenders for NOW Readers Choice to be named “Toronto’s best” – as chosen by you!

To vote for The Great Hall and all your other favourites click here — and be sure to scroll down to the Best Concert Hall category.

You can vote for every single sub-category if you’d like. This is the NOW Readers Choice poll after all: you are the expert. Share what you think should be recognized in Toronto and be sure to promote your picks on social media with the hashtag #NOWReadersChoice.

NOW Toronto Readers’ Choice Awards voting closes on September 16, 2016. Winners will be announced in early November. Rock the vote NOW Toronto!

And if you haven’t been to The Great Hall lately, be sure to check our event calendar and pick up tickets for an upcoming concert or show to enjoy our four venues with all new A/V, air conditioning, bars, restored heritage décor and accessible facilities.

Press: The Toronto Star, Julia Holter keeps us lost in her wilderness

Posted on March 3, 2016November 8, 2016 by admin

The Toronto Star previews Julia Holter’s sold-out March 4, 2016 performance at The Great Hall.

“You can always count on Julia Holter for a change in direction. Her fourth album, last year’s Have You in My Wilderness, marks a notable departure from her earlier, more avant-garde work. Rather than being centralized around a theme, like 2011’s Tragedy (the Euripedes play Hippolytus), 2012’s Ekstasis (author Virginia Woolf, in part) and 2013’s Loud City Song (the 1958 movie musical Gigi), this collection of ethereal electronic-fueled songs is simply that: a collection of ethereal electronic-fuelled songs.

Holter, who will perform at the Great Hall on Friday and whose album topped a number of year-end Top 10 lists, says some of the compositions were simply awaiting proper fermentation before their release was considered.

“I started writing these songs a while ago and I guess this album was asking to be made because . . . I guess I just wanted to make sort of like a collection of ’60s pop ballads or something . . . just love songs, basically,” a distracted-sounding Holter said over the phone, somewhere between Ohio and Minneapolis.

“I didn’t try to do it for awhile, but I think that my projects are kind of like in different realms. It didn’t make sense to do a record of ballads while I was doing Loud City Song or Tragedy: those were more immediate concerns at the time as I already had a collection of songs that fit on those records.”

Naming three ballads, “Sea Calls Me Home,” “Betsy on the Roof” and the title track as the catalysts to completing Have You in My Wilderness, Holter rejects the notion that her newer material is more “accessible.”’ READ FULL STORY

For the full line-up of current events, concerts and shows at The Great Hall, click calendar.

Press: The Star, Art Battle Toronto at The Great Hall

Posted on January 23, 2015November 8, 2016 by admin

Brush toting fighters gird up for Art Battle
A uniquely artistic sport, the live painting competition created by two Torontonians has spread to 55 cities.
The Great Hall hosts a number of recurring creative, cultural and uniquely Toronto events including Art Battle, a timed live painting competition that originated in our venue back in 2009 and has now expanded across Canada, the U.S. and around the globe. Check out this Art Battle Toronto Star story about the growing arts and entertainment phenomenon. Then come watch and vote on — or paint in — Art Battle Toronto at The Great Hall for yourself, soon.

‘“It’s sort of Fight Club for painters.”

Mark Liam Smith is describing what happens when you give an artist 20 minutes to fill a blank canvas in front of a few hundred cheering spectators.

Toronto’s first monthly Art Battle of the year was held Tuesday night at The Great Hall on artsy West Queen West. Sixteen competitors vied to win over the audience, who voted via their smartphones.

It was Smith’s first time duking it out for the chance at a cash prize and spot at the Toronto finals in June. The 42-year-old paints full time and moved to the city just last month, hoping to land representation.

“The life of a painter is a pretty solitary life,” said Smith, who is colour-blind. Battling his peers Tuesday night was a way to connect with the art community, and he was happy to accept invitations from fellow painters to visit their galleries.

Those kinds of connections are exactly what the Art Battle’s founders hope to spark.

Simon Plashkes, 34, and Chris Pemberton, 39, have planned many events together over the years, including an interactive installation at Nuit Blanche and a salon-style speaker series. The idea for a live painting competition came to them when they were thinking of an entertaining intermission between speakers in 2009.

“It greatly outshone the rest of the evening,” said Plashkes.

That’s when they decided to hold it as a stand-alone event at The Great Hall that fall, and it’s become a monthly fixture in the community since.’ READ FULL STORY

Art Battle Toronto takes place monthly at The Great Hall (with a brief summer hiatus). Get the schedule for upcoming Art Battle events right here.