Toronto’s Long Winter Returns With Together Apart

The two-day event will feature live music by local acts and conversations about DIY culture at home and abroad.

by Daniel McIntosh

Published on November 15, 2021

Winter settling into Toronto means that festival season is over, right? Wrong! Before you get all comfy in your sweats and start hibernating for good this winter, layer up and brave the cold for the Long Winter Festival, featuring some of Ontario’s finest emerging artists.

The festival is returning on November 26 and 27 for its 10th season, with two days of performances, installations, and workshops. This year’s focus is DIY spaces: an issue that should strike near and dear to the heart of every Toronto music fan. We all have personal anecdotes of a favourite venue being shuttered and replaced, likely with weed shops or condos, and this year’s festival is responding to that with a series of panels and workshops.

Local creatives will give tips on everything from building performance spaces, budgeting for DIY events, to simply starting a song on Ableton. Live performances will be spread over two buildings and three floors of Toronto’s St. Anne’s church, so dress to wander.

Read on for RANGE’s must-see picks of the festival. This is your chance to say ‘you knew them when’ so get tickets or register for any panels here.

Shn Shn

Shn Shn makes explorative EDM. Her latest EP, e.strange.d, combines orchestral textures with pulsing electronics and sonar-like percussion to create an ethereal backdrop for her evocative spoken word.

Blackwinterwells

Hyperpop is still a relatively new genre, but Blackwinterwells is already one of its veterans, racking up production credits for big names like Glaive and Osquinn. Now the Hamilton-based producer is bringing the glitchy, twitchy subculture into an IRL setting under the Club Quarantine banner.

Karim Olen Ash

Ash most recently contributed a remix to James Baley’s album, A Story, turning a song about rejection into a vogue-ready house cut. Their slot, under the Club Quarantine set on Night 2, is certain to warm up the night.

Asuquomo

The Ottawa-based Asuquomo stretches his sublime storytelling over West African beats. The composer has opened for Lido Pimienta, Burna Boy, and Wizkid, among others.

ISO Radio

One of the co-curators of the fest, ISO Radio is a community radio platform platforming DJs in the local Toronto area. In case you’ve never visited their main haunt (a shipping container in the stackt market) you can get a selection of their mainstay DJs at Long Winter.