Hey look: And what if Toronto became a cultural suburb of Kitchener?

From the magazine, my profile of Edwin Outwater, the very impressive musical director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. He’ll be taking his band up the road to Toronto on Thursday to the Royal Conservatory’s new Koerner Hall, for a program of music selected by the young composer/ party host Nico Muhly, whom some of us saw last year in Toronto opening for (and rather overshadowing) Final Fantasy at the Danforth Music Hall. The program will include a new piece by Richard Reed Parry from Arcade Fire, in which stethoscopes are used in a novel way. This Kitchener-Waterloo, as I have noted on several occasions, is an unusual and impressive place, and Edwin Outwater helps make it so.