Volume 25 Issue 2 - October 2019

SUCCESSION PLANNING
CHANGE
IS COMING
At The
Music
Gallery
ANDREW TIMAR
The Music Gallery in 1975
SEAN HOWARD
An August 13, 2019
press release from
the Music Gallery,
Toronto’s bastion of
new sound presentation
was not the usual early
season announcement
of upcoming concerts.
It read in part: “David
Dacks, artistic director
of the Music Gallery, has
David Dacks announced that 2019/20
will be his last season of programming. Prior to stepping
down, David will pass on his knowledge and experience
through a new Music Gallery mentorship program,
which will see him train and collaborate with two artistic
associates during the Music Gallery’s 2019/20 season.”
My interest was piqued.
For more than four decades, and several different locations, the
MG has been many things: home of the pioneering free improv group
CCMC; a leading Toronto producer and co-presenter; and a cultural
hub, recording studio and rehearsal space/concert hall for numerous
musicians and ensembles of many genre affiliations. It has also served
as exhibition space for visual and sound art, the home of a record label
and radio show, and beginning on a cold 1978 January, Musicworks
magazine’s original incubator. Against stacked odds, the plucky print
magazine and Music Gallery both still serve as homes for “curious ears.”
I once opined in The WholeNote that “young Toronto musicians
toeing one musical edge or another made the MG the proving ground
for their early gigs. Had it been situated in SoHo, NYC, it might have
long ago been widely recognized as a key downtown music institution.”
Dacks began programming at the MG in September 2010 and
since January 2012 has served as artistic director. Two years into
his mandate I interviewed him for The WholeNote (published
September 29, 2014). He stated his aims clearly: “I believe in music
programming which possesses multiple points of interest, and is not
necessarily confrontational, but rather fosters a community-building
environment.”
Dacks’ background as a club DJ, radio broadcaster and journalist
gave him an outlook which encouraged, in his words, “synthesis,
multiple affiliations and opportunities for fluidity in music. My
work in DJ culture is rooted in creating interesting music mixes.”
X Avant 2014, his fall MG concert series, explored the theme
Transculturalism: Moving Beyond Multiculturalism, challenging
expectations about culturally defined music, and building on the
MG’s (and Toronto’s) reputation as a seedbed for cultural multiplicity
and emerging hybridity. In subsequent years Dacks’ imaginative
and adventurous programming and collaborations have broadened the
scope of the Toronto creative music scene in several directions.
How does he see the MG’s role today, its future relevance? And why
leave now? I emailed him in the middle of September to find out.
“The Music Gallery remains Toronto’s centre for creative music,”
Dacks replied. “I think the concept of creative music, which, among
other characteristics, requires a space which encourages community
for people to experiment musically, remains vital to a healthy city and
society. Never before have so many hybrid identities and stories been a
18 | October 2019 thewholenote.com