On Saturday April 12, over 30,000 people from across Canada rallied in front of Ottawa's Parliament Hill, to demand an arms embargo on Israel and an end to Canada's complicity in the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. 

Protesters marched through downtown Ottawa and made it back to Parliament Hill, where they dispersed.

Photo by Hiyam Barakat

Perfect, just perfect. That’s the only word I can use to describe a Tamino concert experience. Seeing the Belgian-Egyptian singer live at MTelus brought me a moment of solace during a busy and stressful finals period. Tamino performed on April 9, right in the middle of the last week of classes. Although it may not have been ideal, I could never complain about seeing one of my favourite artists live.  

The Amateur (Currently in wide release in English and French in Quebec) 

Dir James Hawes 

Staring: Rami Malek, Michael Stuhlbarg, Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan

Austin is weird. The city’s growing tech sector has spawned these characterless, glass obelisks everywhere. SXSW has clearly embraced it too. There was so much weird and terrifying tech stuff at the 2025 edition of the fest. But if you avoid all that and focus your time criss-crossing the city going to as many concerts as possible, it is actually really nice. 

It has been exactly a month since I, along with the CJLO music team, returned from Austin, Texas for SXSW 2025. In that time, I have been trying to form my takeaways from this year’s festival, in a way that is more substantial than ‘Woo! Fun!’ I assume my job there (other than shaking hands with label reps)  is to act as a bit of a trend correspondent. With that, here are some of my music director takeaways from this year’s SXSW.