By Caelan Monkman
After a four-year hiatus, TMUsicians will be rocking out in TD Music Hall on March 22 for the eighth annual Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Battle of the Bands.
The competition was last held in 2019 before being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and will see six bands composed of TMU students competing head-to-head. The winning band will get a recording session with a professional audio engineer at the Allied Music Centre’s newly-renovated Deane Cameron Recording Studio—part of the iconic venue Massey Hall.
The competition is being organized by the student group TMUsicians—which bills itself as “TMU’s Unofficial Music Faculty”—with the group’s president Tom Masterson and finance chair Olivia Presti leading the charge.
Masterson, a fifth-year creative industries student and local folk musician, has been a part of TMUsicians since 2019. He said the pandemic put a big strain on TMUsician’s operations, which is partly why he’s been working with the group for so long.
“I was the vice-president [of TMUsicians] during the pandemic and we almost lost all of our membership,” said Masterson. “I’ve been really sticking around TMU just to keep this group alive and just to see Battle of the Bands come to fruition again, post-pandemic.”
“I don’t really care about competing, I just want to play music”
However, reviving the event hasn’t been without its challenges.
“I definitely had in mind that I wanted TMUsicians to do Battle of the Bands again, but we were kind of floundering,” said Masterson. “After [COVID-19], our [executive] team kinda diminished to just me and I built it up to four people last year. And now this year, thankfully, we have eight people on exec again.”
To help with preparations, Presti and Masterson have been relying on a set of organizing notes left by Tristan Rotilio, a former organizer of Battle of the Bands for TMUsicians—then called Musicians@Ryerson.
“It was like nine pages of just intense detail of everything they used to do and me and Tom were looking at that and thinking, ‘Wow, this is really a lot of planning. It’s really incredible that they used to do this,’” said Presti.
“The document actually said to try to get started in August, and we started in October,” Masterson added with a chuckle. “So it’s been a real rush the whole time trying to get all the puzzle pieces in place. But we’re doing it—which is nuts.”
Despite challenges, both Presti and Masterson are delighted with the reception they’ve received so far from the TMU community while organizing the event, including having 17 bands submit applications to participate in the competition.
“We got a lot of band submissions—more than we had thought [we would]…which is really cool,” said Presti.
The TMUsicians executive team—along with some volunteers—listened to every submission from the 17 band applicants and graded them, choosing the best six to perform at TD Music Hall. The result is a selection of bands which Masterson said represent “a really great mix of genres,” ranging from R&B and dream pop to hardcore.
One of those groups is Placeholders, a hardcore band composed of two TMU students and two musicians from outside the university. Placeholders’ guitarist and second-year TMU professional music student Evan Johnston said while he obviously wants to win, he’s just very excited about the opportunity to perform alongside other TMU bands.
“I don’t really care about competing, I just want to play music,” said Johnston. “That sounds so cliché, but it’s okay because I genuinely believe that.”
Second-year TMU professional communication student Aden Worton is another musician who will be competing in a few weeks’ time. A self-proclaimed indie-alternative musician, Worton says that Battle of the Bands will “be the biggest crowd I’ve ever played for live.”
“I don’t perform live very much,” said Worton. “I’m very much in the studio a lot…this is definitely a new experience for me.”
The winner of the competition will be determined by a panel of judges consisting of industry professionals—including TMU professors and professional musicians—and audience votes.
In addition to the first-place studio session prize, all bands will walk away from the event with a professional video of their performance, recorded by concert videographers at TD Music Hall.
Looking ahead and with the event now only weeks away, both Presti and Masterson are excited, yet stressed.
“We’re excited to be putting this event on,” said Presti. “[It’s] stressful, but it’s going to be worth it.”
TMU’s Battle of the Bands will take place on March 22 from 7-10 p.m. More information can be found through the link in the TMUsicians Instagram bio, with student tickets selling for $10 + fees.
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