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  THIS CALPYSO SHOW WILL BE HOT HOT HOT seven-time Canadian Calypso Monarch Macomere Fifi By Stephen Weir Given the weather of late, the Toronto Symphony has landed on a warm winning theme for its February 15th and 16th Hot Hot Hot concerts in Toronto and Brampton. Of course, it helps to have Calypso and Pan royalty performing center stage! Calypso Monarch King Cosmos (Henry Gomez), seven-time Canadian Calypso Monarch Macomere Fifi, and Canada's Steelband champions, Pan Fantasy—led by the queen of Pan in Toronto, Wendy Jones—will be on a very crowded stage with Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for a series of Caribbean music concerts. Bartholomew-Poyser is a Canadian orchestral conductor from Calgary, Alberta, with strong T&T and Jamaican roots. He has been the Barrett Principal Education Conductor and has conducted performances that blend classical music with genres like reggae, aiming to make orchestral music more accessible to a broader audience. ...

  Exhibition closes with a bang on a steelpan d rum Stephen Weir Monday. Just an hour before the CNE gates shut for the last time this year, Wendy Jones stood on the fair’s International Stage and asked an audience how they are all feeling.  A crowd of 1,000 pan enthusiasts shouted back long and loud. “Hot. Hot. Hot!” Wendy Jones and the Pan Fantasy Steelband and responded in kind.  A rousing stripped down rendition of the Merryman’s  Feeling Hot Hot Hot closed out their one-hour performance in Enwave building at the Ex.  By the time they had packed up their kit (and posed for this picture beside the stage) the CNE had already gone into its shut-down mode for what has been a very successful festival, coming off a 1-year Covid shutdown. The CNE was held from August 19th to September 5 th . According to Darrell Brown, the boss of the festival the “ attendance was over 1 million by the middle of last week, a 10 per cent increase when compared t...