The theme for Luminato 2025 is DAY:NIGHT, with a running concept of exploring how the city is inhabited on a 24-hour cycle. The Festival runs from June 4 to 22, 2025, with events taking place in a wide variety of locations throughout Toronto.
Along with the all day-all night theme, Luminato 20250 will highlight environmental sustainability and mental wellbeing, all in a community spirit of engaging with the city at large via art.
We spoke with Luminato CEO Celia Smith about this year’s program and new directions.
Celia Smith: The Interview
The program this year includes some staggering numbers: more than 1,000 artists from Canada and beyond, including 12 world premieres, 8 commissions and 14 exclusives from 10 countries, and a glance at the lineup includes more options than you can list in a single preview.
“I can’t count that high,” Smith laughs. “Proudly Canadian and totally global.”
It’s about engaging with public art all over the city, all day and all night. “In a nutshell,” she adds. Part of the new energy comes from a new artistic director Olivia Ansell, former Festival Director of Sydney Festival and Head of Contemporary Performance for Sydney Opera House. Celia notes that Olivia has moved to Toronto from Australia with her family. They first met in Sydney. “I met Olivia and went, wow.” Olivia had been with the Sydney Festival for four years. “It’s a very, very large tourism magnet.”
Ansell has been attending Luminato as well. “She’s been to the last two festivals,” Smith says. They’ve been working together for about a year and a half long distance. The focus of their conversations: “How can we turn up the heat in Toronto?”
Upping the volume of activities has been one of the results. “We have at least twice as many experiences as in past years,” she says.
That includes multitudes of free events, exhibitions and experiences from downtown Toronto to parks in Brampton and Scarborough. They’ve kept the ticketed theatrical works accessibly priced. “It’s a smorgasbord of different experiences.”
Music At Luminato 2025
Music plays a large role in Luminato’s programming this year, from its opening to a number of events throughout June.
“That’s showing up Olivia’s background as a musician and growing up in a musical household,” Smith notes.
Queen of the Night Communion is co-produced with Tapestry Opera, an overnight immersive and operatic experience that takes place in the atmospheric environment of the Metropolitan United Church.
The Queen of the Night presides over a secret nocturnal society, and the audience is part of it. The idea is to hear classical music untethered from the usual traditions, including some of the most intriguing characters from the opera canon. Performers will move throughout the space in an event that’s billed as “part ritual, part concert, part revolution”. The event is directed by Tapestry’s Michael Hidetoshi Mori.
Mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó stars as the titular Queen, with performers Ryan Downey, Michael Eusebio, Alex Hetherington, Alexander Hajek, McKenzie Warriner, and Justin Welsh.
“It’s quite different than your standard opera fare,” Celia says.
Grammy Award-winning artist Larnell Lewis, who worked with the artist on multiple occasions, has developed A Glimpse of Quincy: Celebrating the Legendary Quincy Jones, a tribute.
“He’s put together a roster of artists who’ve worked with Quincy.” It turns out that Jones worked in Toronto frequently over the years.
Luminato includes a lot of music, but it’s also about highlighting the experience.
“Everything is cross-disciplinary,” Smith says.
That includes Theo x Travis: Jazz is Dead, a fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, that features GRAMMY-nominated trumpeter, composer, producer and vocalist Theo Croker with dancer Travis Knights, co-presented by dance Immersion.
Polish stage director Krystian Lada’s Dawn Chorus takes Union Station and transforms it into a dynamic concert space.
“Six Toronto based choirs will have their moment in different parts of Union Station,” she explains. Gradually, they will come together for a larger piece at the end of the performance.
“It’s interesting to bring a creator from outside to work with people here,” she says. The venue was made for big acoustics. “It’s an extraordinary place to sing.”
Other musical and sound experiences include:
- Immersed by Justin Gray, an audio experience that blends Indian classical music, jazz, and electronic soundscapes, co-presented with TD Music Hall;
- Dusk Soundscapes by Maria Chávez, a live DJ set co-presented with the Art Gallery of Ontario.
DAY:NIGHT
It was Ansell who spontaneously came up with the theme during a previous visit to Toronto.
“She said, this is a city that never sleeps,” recalls Celia. “She said, Let’s think of a day-night theme.” A festival was the ideal way to explore the city on a broad and inclusive basis. “A festival can do that; you can place yourself in unusual places in the city.”
Among the works that directly address that theme is award-winning photographer Nadya Kwandibens’ (Anishinaabe/Ojibwe) Night/Shifts.
“It’s a gorgeous series of photographs of people who work at night.” The photo series will be displayed from June 4 to July 30 at a series of TTC stations, including Jane, Wilson, Bathurst, Osgoode, and Queen Stations. “People that you might not see if you’re not a night owl yourself,” she adds.
“I think it’s an exciting observation about the city,” she says. “It’s an energy level there.”
Harbourfront will be a hub for a lot of the action. “Lots of free stuff at Harbourfront,” she says. That includes Terceradix Luminarium, a large immersive sound and light show by UK artists Architects of Air that you walk through – sure to intrigue kids and adults alike.
First Breath by UK’s Luke Jerram celebrates each new morning in Toronto with a light installation.
Other free public art installations and performances include:
- THAW by Australia’s Legs on the Wall, an eight-hour performance involving a 2.7-tonne block of ice suspended over Sankofa Square that makes climate change into a concrete experience;
- Rainbow Dreams by Japanese born, Australian based, Hiromi Tango creates three rainbow-filled environments at Brookfield Properties with a focus on well-being;
- Dandyism by Rwandan born, UK based Ziza Patrick celebrates the defiant swagger of African style through street and contemporary dance.
More Performance
“An Oak Tree is a theatre piece by British creator Tim Crouch,” Smith mentions
An Oak Tree is undergoing a 20th anniversary resurgence in London, where Crouch originated the work.
“Tim stars in it, but a different actor plays the part each night.”
It’s a story about loss, presented in partnership with TO Live. The kicker is, the actors don’t know their parts, and Tim guides them through it each night — and, the audience only knows which guest artist will perform at curtain time.
“It turns everything you know about theatre upside down,” Smith says. “A great roster of Canadian actors have stepped up.” That roster includes Amanda Cordner, Amrit Kaur, Qasim Khan, Daniel MacIvor, Karen Robinson, and Jean Yoon, with more to be announced.
“It’s a bit of a grab bag as to what you’ll get,” she adds. “That wasn’t hard to find fabulous people [to take part].”
Another innovative take on traditional theatre sees Peru’s Teatro La Plaza’s take on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, reimagined with eight actors with Down syndrome.
What the Day Owes to the Night by Compagnie Hervé KOUBI (France/Algeria), produced in partnership with TO Live and Fall For Dance North, is a performance that blends capoeira, martial arts, and Sufi traditions.
“It’s a beautiful dance piece,” Celia says.
Final Thoughts
“There is something for everyone.”
From walk though installations to sit down theatre, there are multiple options. “Looking forward, we’re on a track, we’re interested in how a festival not only tells our stories,” Smith says. “How do you really turn on the heat for that time, and draw attention to other things that are going on in the city?”
It’s about what the festival can do, and be, for Toronto and people from near and far who come.
“It’s really ambitious, exciting. I think the city is still coming out of some tough times,” Celia adds.
In June, the evenings are long, and light, and people are spending more time outside and in public.
“How do we gather collectively, and tap into that energy?”
And more…
Here are a few more of the offerings in brief.
- The Wedge Lecture, co-presented by Wedge Curatorial Projects and part of Luminato’s Conversation Series, will explores Black Diasporic narratives, identity and issues around representation.
- Also part of the Conversation Series, Last Words: Talking in Cemeteries with Canadian Christa Couture & Guests explores life, death, and legacy with a local lens in one of Toronto’s historic cemeteries.
- You’re All in the Band, presented by Community Music Schools Toronto in association with Luminato Festival, features hundreds of students in an immersive musical journey.
From Luminato 2025 partners:
- Sleep Temple, presented by Jumblies Theatre in association with Luminato Festival.
- The 52 Live: Stories of Women Who Transformed Toronto presented by Museum of Toronto in association with Luminato Festival
- To Dream of Other Places by Emmanuel Osahor, presented by The Power Plant Gallery.
- Runway Rivers Public Art Installation by John Notten, programmed and presented by YZD.
- Last, and definitely not least: Gimeno Conducts The Best of Brahms by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in association with Luminato Festival.
Find more details about Luminato 2025, taking place across Toronto from June 4 to 22, [HERE].
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