
Sudbury, Ontario’s Up Here Festival is celebrating its 11th year, immersing the city in a musical and artistic weekend residency. This year’s theme, “Upon Refraction,” poses the question of how we bend like light into a new direction when faced with unexpected moments – so as the lineup expands with a second wave of artists, envision laying in the grass, moving in the sun while it sets on your face, and having the flicker of light bend in your beer and dance around you.
No matter how you celebrate festivals, the corners to explore are endless. Running from August 15 to 17, Up Here 11 spreads across downtown Sudbury, offering art installations, Family Day programming, brunch concerts, dinner shows, guided mural tours, and late night music until the starry skies go to bed. When it comes to the music, though, the festival’s wide spectrum of artists is something to celebrate.
Headlining the festival is multiple Juno Award-winning Inuk musician Elisapie. Her most recent album, Inuktitut, is a captivating movement through familiar songs from the ‘60s to the ‘90s as sung in her first language, Inuktitut.

Octopoulpe
With other highlights such as France born, Seoul influenced, and Mexican-based artist Octopoulpe, who branches the definition of musical experience outwards, Montreal musician Ouri, fusing electronic and classical cello with emotion, and a perhaps not so super-secret lounge, Le Crac, which offers yet one more layer to the multitudes of events taking place.
If it all seems like too much to keep up with, Up Here offers a mobile app to guide you through your weekend. With more than 50 concerts spanning day and night at various venues around the city, there is something on the horizon for everybody.
Up Here Festival runs August 15 to 17 at various locations around Sudbury, ON. Weekend Passes and individual tickets are on sale now at uphere.com

By Johnny Papan
Return to the Return (of the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness) is the duo's most ambitious audiovisual project yet.
By Melissa Brassard
From avant electronica to orchestral film scores and live reinterpretations of cult classics, VIFF Live is pushing cinema beyond the screen.
By Glenn Alderson
To celebrate the release of Nouveaux Langages, we asked the artists who helped shape her new double album to ask the questions.
By Sofia Dawson
Daughter From Hell finds the songstress twisting the knife deeper.
By Sebastian Buzzalino
The Vernon quartet’s new album Rat Bastard is a fiercely alive mix of post-punk, dub, techno and basement-show energy.
By Kenna Clifford
Driven by the centuries-old sound of the shamisen, the Berlin-based quintet is deconstructing Japanese folk music and rebuilding it for new audiences around the world.
By Izzy Petraglia
The decade-spanning pop star held an immersive, phone-free experience for devout listeners to celebrate her new album, Music, Fashion, Film.
By Neil Jefferies
Alone Together finds the New York trio navigating grief, fatherhood and the uneasy distance between trust and suspicion.
By Sebastian Buzzalino
The Vancouver punk band bottle their chaotic live energy into a blistering black-and-white session filmed at Phony! Records.
By Cam Delisle
Paring alt-R&B back to its foundations, new avatar gives equal weight to songwriting, distance, and one of the genre's defining voices.