Results tagged “drakehotel”

Steps away from the patio grazers at the Drake Hotel's café, John Kilduff chased down the late summer sun on his vintage treadmill. Dressed in a rumpled, paint-splashed suit, and dogged by a general air of exhaustion, Kilduff brought his Let’s Paint TV show to the sidewalk of Queen Street West.

AWARDS: It was December of 1978 when the first ever Dora Mavor Moore Awards were handed out to deserving theatre artists and plays. After thirty-one years (and twenty-nine more award shows) they are still honouring some of Toronto's best art on a stage, with more than two hundred theatre, dance, and opera productions up for consideration. Tonight, the CBC's Jian Ghomeshi will host the thirtieth Dora Awards, handing out statues within five major divisions: General Theatre, Independent Theatre, Theatre for Young Audience, Dance, and Opera. If you're looking to learn more about the history behind the Dora Awards, the Doras have created a book to be handed out during a pre-party at the Rosewater Supper Club. Following its launch tonight, The Doras: 30 Years of Theatre, Dance, and Opera in Toronto will be for sale at TheatreBooks. Look for Torontoist's coverage of the winners within the next week. Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre (189 Yonge Street), 8 p.m., $60.

MUSIC: Lambchop frontman Kurt Wagner will make a rare solo appearance tonight: the Nashville alternative-country singer is playing at the Drake Underground. The Drake Hotel (1150 Queen Street West), 8 p.m., $15.

Singers, singer-songwriters, comedians, rappers, and good-deed-doers came together Tuesday night at the Drake Hotel for It’s Always Something Else, an evening aid of Gilda’s Club Toronto, the organization named for Gilda Radner that offers free cancer support to those afflicted by the disease.

Photo by MarkyBon.

Iceland was made for you and me.

Many of us developed an affection for opera early in life through Looney Tunes versions of Rossini and Wagner. For some, having Elmer Fudd chant “Kill the Wabbit” to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries” in Chuck Jones's animated masterpiece taught us everything we wanted to know about opera. But if your ambition to appreciate the finer things in life extends beyond Bugs Bunny, real opera could be an intimidating world of old rich people, dead composers, elitist intellectualism and impenetrable European languages.

Tonight the Drake Hotel hosts the second edition of its Nonfiction series. The big idea is that a bunch of journos sit around at the bar swapping stories that never made it to print, like one imagines Charles Foster Kane's newspapermen might have done. Only for a $5.30 cover, civilians are allowed to come listen.

When The Ghost Is Dancing played our Back To School Party last September, they described their sound as "GODZILLA POP." Fast-forward to the release of their debut cd, The Darkest Spark (Sonic Unyon), and it's cleary evident why that description is appropriate. They've expanded their lineup since their EP came out, leaving the number of band members at a staggering nine. Not only have they grown in size, but their sound is appropriately more rich and grandiose. Unfortunately, their epic pop does not always work on their debut, meaning that the small faults on their debut become monumentally huge. Like Godzilla destroying Tokyo, everything goes up in flames quickly.

Would you want to read a book about the middle-aged agoraphobe son of a dead rock star whose life is transformed by a nine year old girl who wants to be a dog? Tish Cohen thinks you will, and Torontoist agrees. The Toronto native has just published her first novel, Town House, which she describes as an “urban anxiety tale”. There’s been a lot of buzz about it, not only in the musty halls of publishing but also in Hollywood, where the movie rights have already been picked up by Fox. Tish and her publishers are holding a free public launch party tonight at the Drake Hotel.

For the entire month of May, the Deep Wireless festival will be taking place at various venues, from the west end to your very own living room. Presented by New Adventures in Sound Art, this is the sixth edition of the annual festival that explores the medium of experimental sound and radio art.

As part of Toronto's glorious annual photography festival, CONTACT, the Drake Hotel is hosting a photo scavenger hunt every weekend in May, and registration is open now.

So, this week's most noteworthy film featuring a horrible zombie is obviously Fido, considering it’s Canadian and stuff, but we’ve talked about it more than enough, so in this week’s column we’ll make do with the next best thing—the horrible freaky visage of Cillian Murphy!

Sure, it's only a couple of days into 2007, but that doesn't mean we can't start making predictions of what musicians will be big this year. Don't feel ashamed if you haven't heard of Basia Bulat yet, but you might want to get on the bandwagon now so that you don't look like a fool later on. The incredibly gifted singer-songwriter from London, Ontario (but originally from Toronto) seems to be heading towards big things, with a steady Internet buzz building around her debut album Oh, My Darling. The album will be released in the UK in March by Rough Trade, but currently does not have North American distribution (which, quite frankly, smells).

For live music junkies, the week between Christmas and New Year's can offer very little in terms of quality shows. The folks at The Drake Hotel are trying to remedy the situation with their What's In The Box? week of shows. Running from the 26th to the 30th, the Drake Underground and Lounge are featuring the best acts from 2006. Each day is five dollars and features five bands, leading to a nice "5 Bands 5 Days 5 Dollars" slogan.

Not everyone's December 25th consists of bulging stockings hanging from a mantel, unwrapping presents in the reflection of Christmas tree ornaments, and a grandmother in her pearls and green and red apron carving a turkey at the family dinner. For those not living in a movie, who are boycotting the holidays, or who forgot about Santa’s birthday, Torontoist has the guide to an alternative Christmas.

Windy enough for ya? Those heavy gusts that left you scrambling for your scarves yesterday also knocked out power to some of Toronto's east end, and much of Atlantic Canada and Quebec.

Ah, another week, another Film Friday. But wait! There’s something special this week to break up the monotony! An extra special review of the (heavily delayed) Pulse brought to us by our superhuman photographer and co-editor David Topping. What do you have to say about it, David?

Usually a monthly occurrence at the Drake Hotel, Neutrino has a basic premise with an interesting twist. Rather than doing improv in front of the audience, the troupe leaves the theatre equipped with a couple of video cameras and do the show from the streets of Toronto. As someone noted upon leaving, it makes you look at the area differently, knowing that they has just filmed on those steps, near that bush, in the tree...

The province has given municipalities the power to set closing time for bars. Toronto even gets the power to add additional taxes to booze. The province might even give this power to other municipalities if it works well in Toronto.

When public debates flare up over whether graffiti is art or vandalism, the heat they generate doesn't even come close to that of the fires that rage within the culture itself over whether art on legal walls, painted in a graffiti style is "real" graffiti. The one thing graffiti opponents and practitioners seem to agree on is the defining element of risk and illegality that is central to the art and act we call graf.

Tonight Pontiac Quarterly unleashes its second issue this year at The Drake Hotel (8pm). For those of you unfamiliar, PQ is a performance magazine where writers read their fiction, feature stories - even advice columns - on stage in front of a live audience. Coming around only four times a year (it's right there in the title!), The Torontoist looks forward to it like our mom looks forward to gardening season.

Copyright isn't exactly a sexy topic, there's no blood, no one dies, there are no burnt out houses or flooded streets to get people riled up. Or is it? Bloggers were able to get a lot of people angry over Sam Bulte when she apparently cozied up to record industry bigwigs at a Drake Hotel fundraiser. And with the Junos (or the Canadian Idol reunion) coming up and the RIAA going crazy down south there's a lot at stake with copyright. And with all those musicians crying poor maybe it is sexier than we thought.

Everyone knows this lady - she's the one on the wall at the Drake Hotel.

Last night, though, the chunky heel was about as useful as a Diet Coke at Christmas dinner. The fashion accessory on this night had to be the winter-time scarf. Has the Drake Hotel ever seen as many scarves as it did last night? Probably. But the most peculiar sight was at the end of the night, when there was no left-over scarves on the ground. Drake, by the way, is known as the icon of Parkdale gentrification. In other news, the Islands, aka the 'Corn Gang, have sold beats to the Swollen Members.

'Ladies and Gentlemen, live at the Apollo, all the way from Torontoooo, Canada, it's....Torontoist!' Wouldn't we love to hear that. But wouldn't anyone? Here's your chance: On Saturday, December 3, the Drake Hotel Underground offers the chance at a much-coveted Apollo Theatre spot. Apollo judges will host auditions starting at 11 am till 2 pm.

If the DJ Socalled's XPACE* performance at the ReJEWvenation (why?) festival on Sunday night (replete with circumcision tent and drunk people dancing as if the Messiah had come) scared you off, muster up some strength to hear SoCalled (aka Josh Dolgin) tonight, when he brings his Yiddish Hip Hop to the Drake Hotel. He manages to bring the house down with the odd combination of a sampler and an accordion, and his hair is impressively big. Good article about that hair in today's Globe too.

Sorry, since there's such urgency to this post, we weren't able to throw out one of our always hilarious Bloc Party/Bloc Quebecois jokes in here. But feel free to think up one as you read and Torontoist will happily ammend the post. Here goes:

Better start brushing up on the cowboy lingo, cause this weekend's could turn into a real hootenanny. What? The cowboys and cowgirls at the Drake Hotel are running a spaghetti and western night this Sunday - that is, a spaghetti dinner and an Italo-Western classic. The movie, which mysteriously hasn't been announced, will play on the Sky Room or Sky Patio or Sky Roof or whatever for a measly ten bucks. Saddle up early, cause there's no exact start time (starts at dusk- 8:30ish) nor is there a finish time (since no one know what the movie will be and thus the end time).