CONCERT SERIES BRINGING SMILES TO TORONTO NEIGHBOURHOOD

A musical Toronto family is bringing joy to a neighbourhood in the Annex by performing a  concert every night since early March, bringing the healing power of music to a community during the pandemic. Horn of the Cob and the Social Distance formed as a horn trio with Adam Seelig on trombone and his two sons Shai on tuba and Arlo on trumpet. Along with Adam’s wife Nomi who serves as the organizer and emcee, it’s their way to salute front line workers. “And I thought well why don’t I just take our brass instruments out and we’ll use that as a way of saluting musically, and contribute to the symphony of noise,” says Adam.

        photo: Toronto Star

Little did Adam know that two musicians with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra live just five doors down. Neil Deland who plays french horn and Vanessa Fralick who plays trombone with the TSO, heard the music one night and asked to join. “We just love the spirit of them and it’s always amazing getting to know somebody through playing music and I really feel that all the neighbours who come out to support us and cheer us on are part of the band too,” says Fralick. Talk about a talented community- the band has since added more horn players from the same neighbourhood to become a septet. “And at that point we didn’t have an extra music stand for them so we pinned the sheet music to a tree in our front yard and it became known as the music tree,” joked Adam. The nightly porch series is closing in on 70 consecutive performances.”In being forced to physically distance, somehow through the music we’ve still managed to become very close,” says Adam. There’s music from every genre from Motown, Bruce Springsteen, Dolly Parton to Prince. To see videos of the performances, visit their twitter account.