Bye, Spring
Sunday, June 9, 2024, from 12:30-4:30 pm
The Don Heights Unitarian CONGREGATION, Suite 102, 18 Wynford Drive, North York, Ontario
REGISTER HERE
Our performers:
Steve Andersen
Kathleen W. Smith
Roberte McKhool
What we’re ALL about
Founded on September 26, 2014, the Canadian Piano Society (CPS) is approaching its tenth year of existence. After 16 months of planning and preliminary meetings, our very first meetup was held in a house owned by one of our first members near Kingston Road on January 17, 2016. It could hold only ten attendees, but from that day forward, we continued to meet at each other’s houses.
Our membership grew fast, so we had to look for an outside venue to accommodate more members. Five months later, a member who was a piano teacher offered her school where she taught. We rented the Grand Room, which had a Yamaha grand piano; it could hold 35 people. It was the Regent Park School of Music at Regent Park in Dundas Street East. We met 18 times there, once a month, before a fire broke out in the school and damaged the venue.
The following month, we met at Trinity St. Paul’s United Church on Bloor Street. We only met once there because the following month, we moved to St. George the Martyr Church, where we met for 11 meetups, ending on December 14, 2019.
This was when the pandemic hit, and in-person meetings were halted.
But wanting to continue, we went on to organize meetups online through Zoom. Being virtual, we became international. We met up with piano groups like us, six times in total. They were the following:
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- July 19, 2020 – CPS with the Bay Area, San Francisco piano group;
- Nov. 15, 2020 – CPS with the London, United Kingdom piano group;
- Feb. 27, 2021 – CPS with the Vienna, Austria piano group;
- April 25, 2021 – CPS with the Chicago North piano group;
- May 15, 2021 – CPS once more with the Bay Area, San Francisco group; and
- June 12, 2021 – CPS with Jen’s Piano Friends of New York.
The 6th Zoom meeting was the last time the CPS met during the pandemic. As of then, since our inception, we’ve had a total of 49 events.
And then, three years and nine months later, propelled by our passion for the piano, we decided to relaunch in-person meetups. On March 25, 2023, we successfully held a meetup dubbed “A New Beginning: Old Friends, New Friends.” It was held in our new headquarters, the Avenue Road Music and Performing Arts Academy at 460 Avenue Road, Toronto, Ontario, and was remarkably successful.
Our members got to perform at the Gordon Lightfoot Performance Hall, which has two grand pianos: a Steinway and a 92-key Bosendorfer. Repertoire for two pianos was introduced for the first time. Our socials, during the intermission, were held at the Academy’s reception hall, boardroom and built-in kitchenette.
On December 23, 2023, we moved to the Don Heights Unitarian Congregation, which could accommodate up to 120 persons and has a Steinway grand and a sound system and projector/screen set up.
We invite you to join us and feel the warmth of Toronto’s finest piano community! Please REGISTER HERE.
Become a member of our Meetup Group. CLICK HERE.