News: Massey Hall & Allied Music Centre Launch New Artist In Residence Program
We spoke with Doug McKendrick of Allied Music Centre ahead of the launch of their new Artist in Residence program.
By Julia Girdharry
Massey Hall, a symbol of Toronto’s evolving music scene, is embracing accessibility and creativity with the new Allied Music Centre and Artist in Residence program.
Since opening its doors in 1894, Massey Hall has held space for boxing and politics, witnessed Gordon Lightfoot play over 170 times, hosted some of the greatest jazz performances in history, and served as the home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. It’s a designated National Historic Site and faced a fire that nearly erased its legacy, only to be reimagined and built again.
Its redesign, completed in 2022, has elevated it beyond a historic concert venue into a world-class recording and performance space. Central to this reinvention is Allied Music Centre, a seven-story tower featuring meeting spaces, lounges, green rooms, writing rooms, a 100-seat theatre, and the 500-capacity TD Music Hall. At its core lies the Deane Cameron Recording Studio, a state-of-the-art facility designed for cutting-edge and complex music music production.
Today, the legacy continues to evolve, operating as a registered not for profit organization and to complement the redevelopment, recently launched their year long artist in residency program. It offers extensive support, including mentorship, studio access, live performance opportunities, creative collaborations, and professional development.
Following the redesign, marking the next chapter in making an impact on the Canadian music scene, Allied Music Centre is making history with its first-ever Artist in Residence program. This initiative is dedicated to creating meaningful opportunities and providing solid support for Indigenous artists. The inaugural lineup features three exceptionally talented musicians: Celeigh Cardinal, Sebastian Gaskin, and Julian Taylor.
This fully equipped hub is designed to nurture music creation, live performance, and artistic growth, providing a supportive environment for the Canadian music community and beyond. Audiences will have the opportunity to experience unique perspectives through music in a groundbreaking way, made possible by the state-of-the-art technology available to the residents.
Doug McKendrick, Vice President of Production and Technology for Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, led the charge of the redesign to support Massey Halls ongoing efforts to impact the Toronto music scene. With nearly 15 years of experience, McKendrick began his career as a touring sound engineer and tour manager, eventually running his own post-production studio specializing in 5.1 surround sound mixing. Having spent years on the road, seeing the world through the lens of a sound engineer, he brings a unique perspective to production technology that prioritizes balancing the creative and technical aspect of sound.
A New Era in Sound Technology
Named after the late Deane Cameron, former President & CEO of Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall Corporation and a visionary in Canadian music, the Deane Cameron Recording Studio is built to push the boundaries of music production. Equipped with a Solid State Logic System T S500 64-fader console and powered by a Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra chip, it stands among the most powerful Mac-based studios in existence. With Pro Tools HDX PCIe cards, the studio processes thousands of audio streams at staggering speeds, ensuring seamless integration of both audio and video production.
This space was designed not just for recording albums but for capturing live performances and complex productions within Massey Hall and Allied Music Centre. It can handle high-track-count recordings, with some sessions reaching up to 100 tracks, and is optimized for immersive audio, featuring Dolby Atmos and spatial mixing capabilities.
The Vision Behind the Project
The concept for this expansive project was developed with input from consultants, vendors, and engineering key figures like Martin Van Dyke and Jamie Howison. Another influential contributor was Eddie Kramer, the legendary recording engineer behind albums for Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and many others. From architectural planning to intricate soundproofing, the project required extensive coordination between experts across multiple fields. Acoustic engineer Bob Essert and a team of designers worked to ensure optimal sound isolation, a crucial factor when housing a recording studio within a performance complex in one of Canada’s loudest and most chaotic cities.
"There's other studios in the city that might be better suited for recording a record and that's not necessarily what we are chasing."
One of the biggest challenges in the redevelopment of Massey Hall was spatial organization. With multiple venues stacked on top of each other, from the 500-person TD Music Hall to a 100-seat theatre, preventing sound interference was critical. The team had to carefully consider the vertical layout to ensure that each space could be used simultaneously without disruption. This meant strategically placing air gaps between loud and quiet areas, such as ensuring the recording studio above the members lounge wouldn’t pick up unwanted noise. Another major hurdle was ensuring seamless connectivity throughout Massey Hall, which, as a heritage building, presented unique structural limitations. The solution involved extensive fiber optic networking, allowing any venue within the complex to plug directly into the recording studio, creating a fully integrated system that enhances both live and recorded sound production.
Exploring Immersive Audio
A major aspect of Massey Hall's evolution is its foray into immersive audio, particularly through Dolby Atmos and spatial mixing, the technology that makes movies and live performances feel truly transformative for audiences. TD Music Hall in Allied Music Centre serves as an immersive venue where material recorded in the Deane Cameron Recording Studio can be played back in a fully spatialized environment, enhancing the depth and realism of the listening experience. Unlike traditional stereo or 5.1 surround sound, the studio's Dolby Atmos setup operates on a 9.1.4 system, allowing for precise placement of sounds within a three-dimensional space. With nine speakers surrounding the listener, a subwoofer for low-end depth, and four additional speakers in the ceiling, the result is a fully immersive dome of sound where individual audio elements can be positioned with pinpoint accuracy to create a sense of presence and dimension. As Doug describes it:
"Dolby Atmos is like being inside the music rather than being an observer of it."
The Endless Possibilities
Massey Hall's revitalized spaces offer artists creative freedom, blending historic charm with cutting-edge technology in spatial audio experiences to push the boundaries of what live recordings and performance can achieve.
"I want to make the technical part disappear so that the creative part can happen."
One of the most unique possibilities is the ability to harness the venue’s legendary acoustics in a way that isn’t possible anywhere else. For example, with prior arrangement, an artist could place their drum kit on Massey Hall’s iconic stage and capture its distinct room sound, creating a recording infused with the venue’s historic resonance. Similarly, TD Music Hall’s acoustics make it an ideal space to record an orchestra at the highest level of fidelity.
Allied Music Centre’s capabilities extend beyond audio. On the fifth floor, a dedicated content capture facility integrates video and audio production, supporting everything from intimate performances to large-scale events. Each venue is equipped with robotic PTZ cameras, with Massey Hall and TD Music Hall each featuring four permanently installed units. Floating cameras allow for additional creative flexibility, and all video feeds can be patched into a centralized control room, where a small team can operate multiple cameras remotely. This setup enables professional-quality video recording and live streaming with minimal crew, making high-end production more accessible to artists.
"The studio is not geared towards one thing or another. We really want to be available to everybody and any genre."
The ability to seamlessly capture and broadcast performances means Massey Hall can support everything from award shows to emerging artist showcases, all with an efficient workflow that eliminates complex setup times. Whether it’s a fully immersive live album, a hybrid live-streaming event, or a direct-to-vinyl pressing, the possibilities within Massey Hall’s reimagined spaces are virtually limitless. Massey Hall and the recent addition of Allied Music Centre is not only preserving its past but setting a new standard for music production in Canada and keeping Toronto a creatively accessible city.
For more information about Allied Music Centre, please visit alliedmusiccentre.com
Header Image by Scott Norsworthy