Music
Toronto is home to three professional orchestras, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Esprit Orchestra, and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra & Chamber Choir, in addition to several small chamber ensembles specializing in Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern and World music. As is common in many cities in North America, choral ensembles that perform with professional instrumental ensembles are amateur. The largest of these is the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, which performs large works for choir and orchestra. The professional core of this choir is the Elmer Iseler Singers. The Amadeus Choir is also a high-caliber ensemble. Canada's largest professional opera company, the Canadian Opera Company makes its home in the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the first true opera house in Toronto and in Canada. There are a number of smaller professional opera ensembles, some of which specialize in new music, such as Tapestry New Opera. Other professional ensembles based in Toronto include the Hannaford Street Silver Band and Canadian Sinfonietta.
Three-piece rock band Rush has been active in Toronto since 1968; band members Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson grew up in the city. An instrumental named "YYZ" after the Toronto Pearson International Airport's IATA airport code was featured on the band's 1981 album Moving Pictures, and has been a mainstay of their subsequent live shows. Dance-punk duo Death from Above 1979 began in Toronto and recorded one studio album (You're a Woman, I'm a Machine) before breaking up in 2006.
In 1971 the Canadian Electronic Ensemble was formed Toronto. It is the oldest continuously active live-electronic performing group in the world.
Despite a hip-hop music scene active since the 1980s, Toronto's hip-hop artists are usually considered underground, having had little success outside of Canada. Artists who have achieved moderate mainstream success include Kardinal Offishall, k-os, Choclair, Maestro Fresh-Wes, Saukrates, Dream Warriors, K'naan and Drake.
R&B and soul music have been prominent in Toronto since the 1990s. Artists such as Deborah Cox, Glenn Lewis and Melanie Fiona have achieved mainstream success outside of Canada.
Toronto's goth scene emerged from the punk and new romantic alternative music scene in the early 1980s. Originally called "freaks", the subculture became significant in Toronto's night club and fashion culture in the late 1990s. After the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, the goth scene experienced an understandable decline. The goth-industrial scene is largely situated in the neighbourhood of West Queen West, and a few signed and independent goth and industrial bands are based in Toronto.
Read more about this topic: Culture In Toronto
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)
“Have you ever been up in your plane at night, alone, somewhere, 20,000 feet above the ocean?... Did you ever hear music up there?... It’s the music a man’s spirit sings to his heart, when the earth’s far away and there isn’t any more fear. It’s the high, fine, beautiful sound of an earth-bound creature who grew wings and flew up high and looked straight into the face of the future. And caught, just for an instant, the unbelievable vision of a free man in a free world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)