Volume 28 Issue 5 | April & May 2023

The WholeNote
VOLUME 28 NO 5
APRIL & MAY 2023
IN THIS EDITION
STORIES AND INTERVIEWS
Wendalyn Bartley, MJ Buell, Paul Ennis,
Jennifer Parr, David Perlman, Lydia Perović,
Andrew Scott, Colin Story
CD Reviewers
Stuart Broomer, Max Christie, Sam Dickinson,
Raul da Gama, Janos Gardonyi, Richard Haskell,
Tiina Kiik, Kati Kiilaspea, Lesley Mitchell- Clarke,
Cheryl Ockrant, David Olds, Ted Parkinson,
Allan Pulker, Ivana Popovic, Terry Robbins,
Michael Schulman, Andrew Scott, Melissa Scott,
Sharna Searle, Bruce Surtees, Andrew Timar, Yoshi
Maclear Wall, Ken Waxman, Matthew Whitfield
Proofreading
Paul Ennis, John Sharpe
Listings Team
John Sharpe, Gary Heard, Colin Story
Design Team
Kevin King, Susan Sinclair
Circulation Team
Jack Buell, Carl Finkle, Vito Gallucci,
Josh Gershateer, James Harris, Bob Jerome,
Anita Lal, Marianela Lopez, Chris Malcolm,
Sheila McCoy, Lorna Nevison, Janet O’Brien,
Tom Sepp, and Dave Taylor
.
UPCOMING DATES AND DEADLINES
Weekly Online Listings Updates
6pm every Tuesday for weekend posting
for Volume 28 No. 6
Summer 2023 (June | July | August)
Publication Dates
Friday, May 26 (digital)
Tuesday, May 30, (print)
Print edition listings deadline
6pm Tuesday, March 14
Print advertising, reservation deadline
6pm Tuesday, May 16
Printed in Canada
Couto Printing & Publishing Services
Circulation Statement - Feb 7, 2023
9,000 printed & distributed
Canadian Publication Product
Sales Agreement 1263846
ISSN 14888-8785 WHOLENOTE
Publications Mail Agreement #40026682
WholeNote Media Inc. accepts no responsibility or
liability for claims made for any product or service
reported on or advertised in this issue.
FOR OPENERS
Neighbourhood doesn’t mean
the same thing as community
The WholeNote is on the move. Well, sort of.
We are taking our editorial operations back to
the neighbourhood where The WholeNote saw
its beginnings in the summer of 1995. It had
rapidly outgrown its niche as a column titled
“Musical Pulse” in the Kensington Market
Drum, our local newspaper founded in 1989
in an effort to give the neighbourhood some
control of the media narrative when it came to
issues we saw as an imminent threat to “the
Market’s” survival.
The biggest such threat, back then, was a
light rail transit line that Metro and the TTC
were going to ram down the middle of Spadina
Avenue – a Scarborough LRT-style train, in
a protected right-of way, which would have
turned Spadina’s complex street life, from Bloor
to Front, into a drive-through corridor.It would
have had half the number of transit stops, crippled
restrictions on turns, in and out of adjacent
neighbourhoods, and eliminated most of the on-street parking along the Avenue’s
middle stretch.This would have threatened the viability of the street’s hodge-podge of
small scale business, and the rich mix of residents in the low-rise apartments above –
residents who provided what urban visionary Jane Jacobs called “eyes on the street.”
Ears too – tuned to the Avenue’s ever-shifting soundscape: cries for help, shouts of
laughter or rancor, all the blare of urban life … and, everywhere, music.
“Wait a minute, cars bad, transit good,” I hear some of you say. Indeed…ish.
Because the plan also called for drastic sidewalk cuts so the extra space needed
to protect the transit line could be accommodated without reducing the four-tosix
lane highway width that Metro Transportation wanted, to serve the commuter
needs of the massive redevelopments planned south of Front Street – including the
SkyDome and, if things went as planned, the athletes village for the 1996 Olympics –
the Games, thank you Coca-Cola, that were awarded to Atlanta.
Issues like these have the power to galvanize all the interest groups within range,
instantly turning talk about “the neighbourhood” into talk about “the community”
– but its a use of the word usually ends with a whimper, once “the community” has
to decide in whose neighbourhood the agreed solution should go.
So, neighbourhood is not the same as community, but it is the soil in which
community either grows and thrives, or withers. So, off we go back to a new office
in the Market, to re-root what we do, within earshot and direct line of sight of
where we all started. Meanwhile, back here at the Centre for Social Innovation at
720 Bathurst St., our home for the past 20 years, Wholenote Media Inc. will keep a
foothold for the other (and in some ways more useful) core thing we do: seeking out,
harvesting, and freely sharing information about live music in all its forms everywhere
we can reach – wherever there are people on the ground willing to assist in
the task. Because it takes ears tuned to each particular neighbourhood (or community’s)
soundscape to paint a full picture of all the musical art that is there. There are
no “arts deserts” someone reminded me after last issue’s editorial, just places where
outsiders do not have ears tuned to community life.
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com
COPYRIGHT © 2023 WHOLENOTE MEDIA INC
8 | April & May, 2023 thewholenote.com