In Canada: Program to Empower Black Canadian Music Managers Launches

A caller inaugural is elevating Black Canadian creator managers successful the industry.

F.A.M.E. (Foundations & Acceleration for Management Excellence) is designed to fortify capacity, enactment and sustainability for Black euphony managers.

Started by Toronto-based non-profit, Breaking Down Racial Barriers (BDRB), the eight-week programme — moving from October 14 to December 4 — volition supply intensive training, mentorship and manufacture entree for Black-identifying euphony leaders.

Led by euphony manager Katrina Lopes, the inaugural includes play Zoom workshops with absorption manufacture leaders, one-on-one mentorship and networking sessions with elder euphony executives and impermanent speakers from Canadian and U.S. euphony markets. Participants tin summation applicable skills, networks and the assurance needed to turn their absorption businesses and enactment artists connected a planetary scale.

“F.A.M.E. was created to equip Black euphony managers successful Canada with the tools and resources to physique stronger careers and foster much occurrence stories,” says BDRB co-founder and programme David ‘Click’ Cox. “F.A.M.E. is astir access, mentorship, and assemblage — truthful managers tin thrive and pb the adjacent procreation of Canadian music.”

Combining applicable cognition and acquisition with a taste lens, F.A.M.E. boasts problem-solving skills to tackle aboriginal challenges successful the euphony manufacture — from disruptive technologies to caller models of creator sustainability and equity.

“Developed from the crushed up with a elaborate program specifically curated to the needs of Black euphony creator managers from the position of Black euphony manufacture professionals who person successfully navigated the industry,” says Ian Andre Espinet, BDRB co-founder.

Read more here. — Heather Taylor-Singh

Allison Russell Talks Working with Joni Mitchell astatine SOCAN Awards: ‘One of the Most Surreal Gifts of My Life’

SOCAN celebrated its 100th day by presenting the Global Impact Award to a existent Canadian legend: Joni Mitchell. The singer-songwriter won the grant for her 1969 classic, “Both Sides, Now.”

Mitchell was not capable to be the SOCAN Awards ceremonial successful Toronto connected Sept. 30, but she was honoured successful an outdoor ceremonial successful Los Angeles, including SOCAN executives similar CEO Jennifer Brown and the consulate wide of Canada.

Instead, the awards brought connected a instrumentalist who present knows her well: Grammy-winning roots singer-songwriter Allison Russell.

The Montreal-born, Nashville-based creator performed a almighty solo mentation of “Both Sides, Now” that included a spoken poesy intro, a cappella singing and unaccompanied clarinet. It was an unconventional show that echoed the mature gravitas of Mitchell’s performances since coming retired of status astatine the 2022 Newport Folk Festival. And there’s a crushed for that: Russell has been a large portion of that comeback.

“I’m very, precise fortunate to person a fantastic chosen sister, Brandi Carlile, who invited maine into the magic ellipse of Joni Jam [the star-studded performances by Mitchell and a ample ellipse of different musicians],” she tells Billboard Canada on the reddish carpet earlier the ceremony. “I play clarinet and sing backups. We’ve done Newport, we’ve done the Gorge, we’ve done Hollywood Bowl, we did the Grammys, which was conscionable extraordinary. [Joni] truly likes my clarinet playing, which is mind-blowing.”

Russell has been welcomed by the legendary songwriter astatine jam sessions successful her Los Angeles home, which is simply a large woody for the instrumentalist who grew up idolizing her.

“Walking into her surviving country is similar walking into her beauteous mind,” she explains. “Every inch of the walls are covered with her bonzer paintings, which she’s readying to donate to a depository successful Saskatoon close by the Saskatchewan River erstwhile she, I anticipation 50 years from now, rejoins the stars.”

“Getting to beryllium successful originative communion and assemblage with her has been 1 of the astir surreal g...