Musicians from Kingston took center stage on Friday night in Montreal as two festivals collaborated for an evening showcasing artists from Kingston.
POP Montreal’s 23rd edition took over Quebec’s largest city on the last weekend of September, with a wide variety of shows and music genres presented throughout Montreal.
On Friday night, Quai Des Brumes played host to a collaborative effort between organizers at POP and Kingston’s Spring Reverb festival that is run by KPP Concerts.
Marc Garniss, a co-founder of Spring Reverb festival and board of director for KPP Concerts, says KPP has been attending POP Montreal since before the launch of Spring Reverb, and now with the festival becoming an annual event the two events arrange to swap showcases.
Garniss says festivals teaming up in such a way can be helpful for emerging artists to get their feet wet in new cities.
“I played in a band and we actually did end up playing POP Montreal a long, long time ago, but I think we probably applied for it like five times before we ever got in,” Garniss said.
“If we were in a position where we could help get a few more Kingston bands into the festival, I feel like that was something that I could have used from when I was playing in a band.”
Garniss says it opens a channel for Kingston artists to present their music in a city with a thriving music scene like Montreal, and at Spring Reverb, artists from Montreal get the same benefit in Kingston without having to organize a show of their own.
Acts from Kingston at Quai Des Brumes on Friday night included Luella, The Petras, and Almond Milk, who each boasted a very different sounding performance.
Artists who were selected all had to have previously played Spring Reverb, and also had to have submitted an application for this year’s POP Montreal festival.
The selection was meant to give a snapshot of the wide variety of sounds that Kingston has within its scene.
Rowan Picard, lead singer of The Petras, had only positive things to say about her and the band’s first experience in Montreal.
She says she was impressed with how into the show the audience was, and she felt that the lineup of artists did a good job of showcasing the variety that Kingston has within its music scene.
“I do feel that the line-up that we had was actually like a really nice like diverse selection of what we have in Kingston,” Picard said.
“I think there’s a really nice variety there.”
Going forward, Garniss says Spring Reverb organizers are hopeful to leverage the festival in order to bring musicians from a wider array of different cities to Kingston, and respectively find opportunities for Kingston artists to make their way to cities like London or Sudbury.
“I think a good move for the festival would be to try to incorporate one new partnership per year to just kind of grow it,” Garniss said.
“I don’t think we want it to end up being just like every showcase at Spring Reverb is just a partnership with another festival in another city, but if we got to the point where there was four or five of those happening, I think people would be interested in that.”
