In a radical departure, Canadian Music Week will now be called the Departure Festival + Conference | Canada Voices

At a media launch event in Toronto, the new owners of Canadian Music Week unveiled its reimagined vision of the event founded in 1982. In a radical departure, the annual music festival and industry convention will now be known as the Departure Festival + Conference.

In an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail, Kevin Barton, executive producer at Loft Entertainment, said the old name was “limiting” in a music industry that is increasingly global. As well, Loft and partner Oak View Group (OVG) want to expand beyond a week (with some year-round programming) and beyond music.

“Artists aren’t singularly disciplined and art intersects on different planes,” Barton said. “Every comedian I know wants to be a rapper, every rapper wants to be an athlete, and on and on it goes.”

Comedy is part of the Departure Festival + Conference’s plans for a broader programming spectrum. The event on Tuesday was at emceed by Canadian stand-up comedian Russell Peters at Hotel X, a luxury facility on the city’s waterfront where the conference will now take place, moving west from the previous host hotel, the Westin Harbour Castle.

The sale of CMW was announced at this year’s conference in June. Loft Entertainment is led by industry heavyweight Randy Lennox, who was president and chief executive officer of Universal Music Canada from 1998 to 2015, before serving as president of Bell Media.

Loft’s partner in the CMW rebranding, OVG, is a Denver-based company founded by Tim Leiweke and Irving Azoff in 2015. Overseeing venue development and management for the live entertainment industry, OVG increased its presence in Canada when it took on the renovation of Hamilton’s FirstOntario Centre arena. It also owns the concert industry trade publication Pollstar.

“There was some natural synergy with Oakview,” Barton said. “There are things they know how to do better. They’re running sales, sponsorship and ticketing for example. They’re in this country and they want to be involved in the community. This is another property for them to put their brand in front of.”

The inaugural Departure Festival + Conference will take place in the second week of May, a month earlier in the music industry calendar than this year’s CMW.

Despite branching out into programming streams that include art, comedy and technology, the Departure event will remained rooted in music, according to Barton. “We’re not moving away from that. We’re just taking other smaller swings in different spaces.”

The festival was founded by Neill Dixon, who sold it and retired as president this summer at age 78. The changing of the guard in Canadian music industry events continued last month when Artshouse Media Group (AMG) acquired a 50-per-cent stake in Toronto music festival North By Northeast (NXNE). The media company publishes Billboard Canada, Billboard UK and Rolling Stone Quebec. The annual NXNE was co-founded in 1995 by magazine publisher Michael Hollett. He will continue in his role as president and CEO.

“Any property that sits in any place too long needs new oxygen and new ideas,” Barton said. “With CMW, we saw an opportunity to broaden the community. We have the ability to expand it in a bigger way, with younger processes.”

Loft’s other point of focus is Toronto itself. Barton and Loft looked at how events such as South by Southwest in Austin, Tex., integrates itself with the host city. He wants the same for Departure and a culturally diverse Toronto.

“If this exists in Toronto, how do we lean into what Toronto really means, to attract a global mindset here?” he said. “You don’t have to scream it from the roof top, but you have to lean into what the city has to offer.”