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After more than three years of darkness and its biggest renovation in more than 100 years, Toronto’s most famous venue is back in operation
GORDON LIGHTFOOT with TOM RUSH at Massey Hall, Thursday, November 26. NNNN
Gordon Lightfoot has played 171 times at Massey Hall, but not nearly as important as last night. It was the first concert at the Sacred Music Hall in Toronto in more than three years, its longest shutdown on record – not because of the pandemic, but a massive $ 184 million renovation. It was also the night Lightfoot received the key to the city.
Mayor John Tory handed the key to the Canadian singer / songwriter ahead of the concert, declaring him Gordon Lightfoot Day in Toronto. Lightfoot spoke a little about how happy he was to be back at Massey Hall and for the much needed update – there’s finally a proper backstage area – and apologized that he “would be playing with a broken wing â€.
Toronto Mayor John Tory hands Gordon Lightfoot the key to the city.
He was talking about the steel plate in his arm, a result of the broken wrist he suffered after falling in his house this summer. Yet after such a long shutdown and a global pandemic that could have pushed her even longer, everyone in the room was thankful that the 83-year-old icon was available to play the reopening of Massey Hall, just as he performed. his farewell show in 2018.
Inside the revitalized Massey Hall
It’s also a relief to see that Massey Hall is both refreshed and very similar. On a guided tour the day before, Chief Architect Marianne McKenna spoke about the goals of the project – to bring the concert hall into the 21st century without sacrificing the character that makes it such a special place.
Nicole Clark gets on her Jeep to take a photo of the newly re-lit Massey Hall sign.
The famous acoustics have been studied and preserved – artists can still perform their favorite move away from the mic for the song, and Lightfoot’s jokes with his bandmates were fully audible last night – but it has also been improved. and optimized for amplification, which was not so much of a consideration when it opened in 1894.
The hall is still laid out in much the same way, with three levels of seating allowing between 2,500 and 2,800 fans, but it has been made much more comfortable. Sightlines are better, with seats on the floor now curving a bit instead of coming forward in straight rows. The seats got much-needed padding and legroom – people had to be smaller a century ago, and they had to have buttocks that were resistant to falling asleep. But the room remains intimate, with every (masked) face visible from the stage and other seats.
More important than anything else, the venue has improved its accessibility and now offers accessible seating at all levels – once a major glaring omission from their oft-cited quote from founder Hart Massey that the venue was a “gift to the people” . There are also elevators and modernized bathrooms.
The seats are now retractable, sliding under the stage to allow standing concerts. This will allow many artists who would never have played Massey Hall to perform there, so get ready for more hip-hop and metal shows. It also has a tech upgrade to enable larger productions and touring shows with lights and pyro. The stage setup feels more modern, even though it was just a light, slightly psychedelic swirling backdrop for Lightfoot.
You still feel the dread of entering, even though the modern touches reduce the feeling of sitting among the ghosts of anyone who’s played there. In some ways, however, they made him even more like his original self. Fire escapes finally cleared the ‘Massey Music Hall’ inscription on the facade of the building after more than a century, and the original stained glass windows were uncovered after almost that long. Seeing them on either side of the room makes Massey feel almost ecclesiastical, which also harkens back to his early days, when he regularly hosted religious shows.
Gordon Lightfoot brings a sense of occasion
To enter and feel that awe, however, the audience had to enter first. A very punctual opening night audience – in which many seemed to have firsthand memories of the folkloric Riverboat and Village Corner cafes of the ’60s when Lightfoot shouted at them – stretched from Shuter Street in Victoria, across Queen and Yonge. to the Elgin Theater. But everyone was allowed in before Massey Hall CEO Jesse Kumagai said “in a few minutes the music will be back at Massey Hall.”
After the key opening ceremony and remarks, opener Tom Rush took the stage. The American folkie, a contemporary of Lightfoots in those same 1960s cafes, performed a solo set that drew the crowd with every word. The 80-year-old mustached songwriter was the first to cover Joni Mitchell and actually recorded his song Urge For Going before she did so in 1967. He played this one and the other by Murray McLauchlan. , shouting his relationship with CanCon.
These songs were very pretty and majestic, but it was his silliest songs that captivated the crowd. His talking blues tune Making The Best Of A Bad Situation was structured like an old joke, much like The Remember Song, with punchlines about forgetting his keys, his wallet, his answering machine code and the woman angry at him. leaving a breaking message. It was the right mix of majestic reverence and levity for the occasion and the room.
Lightfoot kept that same energy in his own set, which was packed with all of his best-known songs – Sundowners, Carefree Highway, Early Morning Rain, If You Can Read My Mind, and the epic Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald. These highlights made a lot of people’s cell phones stand out (it will be a very well recorded live set). Dressed in his signature burgundy velvet tuxedo jacket, Lightfoot knew he had a routine to hit and he mostly did it. Even though Lightfoot’s voice is noticeably thinner than his former baritone, it’s amazing to hear the songs in their most natural environment. His longtime companions helped raise the tunes with cheerful guitar licks and drumming.
The audience seemed to want a little more spread between the songs, with many people taking brief moments of silence to shout variations on “We love you, Gord!” But he limited his jokes to a few dedications, including his daughter Ingrid, Mayor Tory, Bernie Fiedler (who ran the aforementioned Riverboat folk club) and astronaut Chris Hadfield, who were all in attendance. He also spoke about the late musical philanthropist Allan Slaight, the new namesake of the Massey scene. At one point he did a round of his long locks, then joked that he would keep playing as long as he had hair.
The renovation is not yet fully completed. This revitalized Massey Hall is now part of a much larger complex called the Allied Music Center which will include two new, smaller stages, rehearsal spaces, recording studios and more. This part will not be open until the New Year. But in the meantime, Toronto has brought one of its most famous sites back into service.
Gordon Lightfoot is giving two more shows at Massey Hall on November 26 and 27.
Richard Trapunski
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