This is a list of concerts we are attending, wishing we could attend, or thinking about attending between June 15 and 21, 2026. For more of what’s happening around Toronto, visit our calendar here.
Luminato Festival/Tapestry Opera/Canadian Opera Company: 10 Days in a Madhouse
Tuesday, June 16, 7:30 p.m., Thursday, June 18, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, June 20, 3:30 p.m., Sunday, June 21 1:30 p.m.
St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts — Bluma Appel Theatre, $69+
Ah, Luminato. This super-chill cross-discipline summer festival always brings a few provocative things. This new opera project, a collaboration of Tapestry and Opera Philadelphia, treads in the long subject of mad women. As a child, I wondered why Salem had so many witches, and no-one really could explain. As I learned more, read more, and paid attention a little more to the world we live in, I realized that being labeled ‘crazy woman’ usually meant something else — including strong-willed, non-passive, curious and rights-seeking. Journalist Nellie Bly’s adventure into the infamous Blackwell’s Asylum in New York City in 1887, a place also described as a ‘penitentiary, institution for people with disability or in need of welfare’, covers many feminist issues as well as socioeconomical, and human right issues of women, the sick, immigrants, and the poor. With continuous budget cuts in long term social and health care everywhere in the world, and the never ending warmongering by the patriarchy, seeing this subject cast in new light by René Orth with libretto by Hannah Moscovitch is not a surprise, but certainly a curiosity. Come and see where this production will take you — who is mad, and who will believe it? When we say we understand sanity and insanity, do we? Read our Interview with Hannah Moscovitch here, and our Interview with René Orth here. Info here.
University of Toronto, Faculty of Music: Dr. Arlan Vriens: Futureproofing
Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
Walter Hall, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, 80 Queen’s Park, free
It is astonishing to think how much technology has changed in just the last 50 years. Many of the readers here would remember their first Hi-Fi, the cassette tapes and the little plastic tab that could make the recording ‘permanent’ as you break it off (until you put a tape over it), the rituals of listening to an album from the beginning to the end, sometimes with a flip in the middle, the dial-up internet and screamy loud dot-matrix printers… all the way to the phones powerful enough to be a small TV production office, and nearly instantaneous international broadcasting in everyone’s hands. The Gen-Xers and Millennials had to crash through brand new technology platforms every few years, and so much of this tech left many memories in childhoods. Vriens’ Futureproofing is a research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in disguise as a concert, starting with near-obsolete technology, including radio transmitters, and printing calculators, to pachinko slots, five new commissions will feature mashing of violin and tech — a retro adventure in electronic music. Come out and enjoy this whimsical evening. Info here.
Luminato Festival: The Philip Glass Ensemble
Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m.
Koerner Hall, $44+
Another fun offering from Luminato. Philip Glass is a major American icon, and his early works made a great impression on audiences beyond the classical realm. The PGE is featuring a program of Glass’s early hits, including: Glassworks, Dance 1 from Einstein on the Beach, Grid from Koyaanisqatsi, and Funeral from the opera Akhnaten. Starting at two 20s and a bit of change, this is a great way to hear these works live, with top notch musicians in the beautiful acoustics of Koerner Hall. Come and enjoy the pulsations, and be ready to be hypnotized. Read our Interview with PGE’s Andrew Sterman here. Info here.
Harbourfront Centre: Summer Music in the Garden: The Sovereignty of Song
Sunday, June 21, 4 p.m.
Toronto Music Garden, 479 Queens Quay W., free
The lovely Summer Music in the Garden series returns for another interesting season, opening with Julie Lumsden and Kate Carver, presenting a Métis-centered vocal-piano program, including Ian Cusson’s Five Songs on Poems of Marilyn Dumont. Dumont, born in northeastern Alberta, has been a busy poet and educator of Cree and Métis heritage, and as another Canada Day approaches, it would be good to refocus on that big elephant in the room in our Canadian History — Indigenous history and culture. For SMiG, we last heard this piece in 2022, a version for voice and string quartet — it’ll be extra interesting for those who remember to see how a work can change depending on instrumentation. Come and join the lovely atmosphere of summer late afternoon in this lovely garden, beautifully and gently designed. Info here.
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