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Urban Planner: October 6, 2009
Urban Planner is Torontoist’s guide to what’s on in Toronto, published every weekday morning, and in a weekend edition Friday afternoons. If you have an event you’d like considered, email all of its details—as well as images, if you’ve got any—to events@torontoist.com.
This photo by Olivier Laban-Mattei is a third-prize winner under the category “General News Stories” at the World Press Photo competition. Courtesy of Hot Docs.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Hot Docs, the largest documentary film festival in North America, is branching out into the world of photojournalism today with the opening of World Press Photo 09. This exhibition will display the best photographs chosen from the World Press Photo Foundation’s annual worldwide photojournalism contest. Out of over 90,000 photographs from photographers of over 100 different nationalities, 196 striking images were chosen and will be on display until October 24. Allen Lambert Galleria, Brookfield Place (181 Bay Street), 7 a.m.–10 p.m., FREE.
FOOD: Tonight is the annual Eat to the Beat fundraising event for Willow Breast Cancer Support Canada, which provides support to any person affected by breast cancer. This event, now in its fifteenth year, features sixty of Canada’s best female chefs serving up gourmet dishes, while a silent auction, musical entertainment, and celebrity chef Anna Olson keep people busy between courses. Look for some of the outrageous corsets—created by Canadian designers (some of whom have been touched by breast cancer themselves)—which have become staples at the Eat to the Beat events. Roy Thomson Hall (60 Simcoe Street), 7 p.m., $150 (registration closes today at 4 p.m.).
CABARET: Burlesque is so hot right now. It seems like every night in Toronto there are tassels twirling to some almost-forgotten jazz number in the back of a retro-chic club. Circus Entertainment is no stranger to burlesque shows (they call them Peek-A-Boo Babes), or to other sideshow performers like magicians, body painters, and circus acts. In addition to their other work hosting parties around the city (they work a lot with various liquor companies), Circus Entertainment will now present the Circus Cabaret Roadshow, an all-new weekly adult-centred variety and talent show contest designed specifically to discover new variety entertainers of all different genres (not just burlesque, although there’s probably a lot of that too). Held at the recently renovated Laurentian Room on the second floor of the Winchester Hotel in Cabbagetown (now a re-christened vodka bar called the Samovar Room), the Circus Cabaret Roadshow promises to submerse revellers into the vintage cool of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and for some reason the ’80s too. Tonight’s event, “The Playground,” will entertain guests with go-go dancers, music from DJ Misty, prizes, cheap drinks (four dollar bar rails!), and merchandise from Circus’ Doll House Boutique. Winchester Hotel, Samovar Room (51A Winchester Street), 9 p.m., $5 at the door.
MUSIC: Despite all of York University’s shortcomings, it does have one heck of a jazz program. One of Canada’s longest running jazz quartets, Time Warp, emerged in 1980 from that very program, and they’re back on campus today for a special performance in celebration of York’s fiftieth birthday. Founding members Barry Elmes and Al Henderson, along with current members Kevin Turcotte and Kelly Jefferson (all of whom are current faculty members in the York music department) will be joined on stage by eleven other artists to form the Time Warp Jazz Orchestra. Tonight they’ll be premiering some new arrangements for jazz orchestra of “Theme for Coleman Hawkins,” “Nima na Kombo,” “Gridlock,” and many others. Accolade East Building, Tribute Communities Recital Hall (4700 Keele Street), 7:30 p.m., $15 (students and seniors $5).
