I’ve been artist-in-residence at Harris Institute since 2011—the same year I took up the weekly column for the late David Farrell at FYIMUSICNEWS.ca, which now breathes under the Billboard Magazine Canada banner. I think back to those first afternoons in the old Richmond Street building—me, lightning cable in hand, students wandering the hallways with that familiar mixture of anticipation and what’s up—and John Harris behind that broad desk and giving a motivation speech that told you he was already five steps ahead of the city.
Young John had big dreams. Grand, monkey-bar-sized dreams you could swing from. Dreams shaped like steel, glass, and possibility. Metronome—his waterfront mega-complex—one of those audacious ideas Toronto wasn’t mentally limber enough to embrace. Toronto at the time didn’t have wide eyes or loose shoulders. It was a city still wearing its Protestant corset, breathing shallow, regulating its cultural pulse by committee. John wanted to yank the arts, media, technology, broadcasting, and recording—every cross-entity—into one roof, one throbbing ecosystem that generates music-industry life.
He carried those brochures like a preacher carries scripture—architectural diagrams rolled underarm, concept plans tucked in jacket pockets, belief simmering behind the eyes. And when Toronto didn’t bite, he pivoted. Not with defeat, but with purpose. In 1989, he opened the Harris Institute and found the lane he was always supposed to run. The other side of music—the side too many dreamers ignore until their pockets are empty and their hopes dented: skills, sustainability, the actual machinery behind the art.
Recording. Management. Publishing. PR. All the connective tissue. And always—creativity. Even as we slid from the analog romance of tape into the mouse-click dawn of Pro Tools, when studios began shrinking like glaciers under a warming sun, Harris kept pace. Added faculty. Added tech. Added vision. Studio and live engineering. Sound architecture. The full suite of disciplines you need to survive in an industry that mutates faster than the city’s skyline.
And the years proved him right.
Harris built an international reputation for cultivating graduates who win Grammys, Emmys, CMAs, Rock Awards, Junos—the ones who walk into a room with skill sets reinforced like steel beams. The house has always been stacked with talent—students, faculty, and the occasional musician-in-residence with a few scars and a few stories.
For me, it’s always been about the intimacy. The classroom conversations. The students who arrive after degrees and corporate detours, hungry for the thing they shelved years earlier when practicality overrode passion. Students who want to talk about African American composer Florence Price in the same breath as they use to argue the merits of Jacob Collier’s harmonic galaxies. Students who want to understand how W.C. Handy tilled the soil for everything from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to D’Angelo.
That’s the point of teaching—not lecturing but exchanging oxygen.
This summer, I stepped away. Needed the breather. Between the theatre, the Substack, decades of three radio shows and three columns a week, gigs, teaching, endless deadlines—I felt the tank groan. So, I did what my bones have always told me to do: grabbed the bike, slung the camera over my shoulder, and roamed Toronto like a pilgrim looking for soul. Shot photos. Mingled with alleyways. Chased the ghost of the city I fell in love with in ’69. Started writing a new book—because a writer is never not writing, even when pretending to rest.
I returned a couple of weeks ago. John, effervescent as ever, practically vibrating with news. We always take fifteen minutes before class to catch up, then a little time after. This time, he was buzzing like a radio tower. A former Harris student is up for seven Grammy nominations. I nodded—Harris alumni winning awards is practically a weekly bulletin board update. But John was insistent.
Seven Grammy nominations.
Producer of the Year.
Album of the Year.
Song of the Year (twice).
Record of the Year (twice).
Best Dance Pop Recording.
Henry “CIRKUT” Walter.
One of ours.
The kid who walked these same hallways is now producing Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra,” Rosé and Bruno Mars’ “APT,” and Gaga’s album Mayhem. The same CIRKUT who won a Grammy for Starboy with The Weeknd. The same CIRKUT with ten #1 Billboard Hot 100 hits. Ranked #3 on Billboard’s “Top Producers of the 21st Century.”
John beamed like a proud parent.
“It is thrilling to see a student achieving their dreams,”
—John Harris
And this is why I’m still here. Why do I return every term? Why the classroom never loses its shine.
Because where else in the city can you sit with young creatives and talk about Louis Moreau Gottschalk bending classical form toward the Caribbean? Florence Beatrice Price reinventing the American symphonic language? Buddy Bolden blowing the first jazz notes into the humid New Orleans air? Bessie Smith’s thunder? James P. Johnson hitting that stride piano that set Harlem on fire? Robert Johnson at the crossroads, reshaping mythology? Jelly Roll Morton with that Creole swagger? W.C. Handy, hearing the blues before the world knew the word?
Or leap continents—to Pablo Milanés.
Or trace gospel to Rosetta Tharpe.
Or map modern lineage from D’Angelo’s voodoo grooves to Jacob Collier’s multi-dimensional harmonic architecture.
Or talk about Jahari Stamply, a name the future will one day speak with familiarity.
This is good work. The heart work. The work that matters.
Because institutions like Harris don’t just teach music—they teach continuity. They keep the river flowing. They remind us that every note played in a Toronto basement studio or broadcast from a college classroom is part of a lineage stretching back through cotton fields, parlour rooms, juke joints, conservatories, church pews, and street parades.
And as long as John Harris has breath—and as long as there are students hungry to learn—this place will keep producing dreamers who turn into doers. Kids who become CIRKUT. Kids who become the next wave.
And I’ll keep showing up.
With stories.
With history.
With the music that saved my life.
Because this is where minds and music matter.
Where the past breathes into the future.
And where future leaders gather.
https://harrisinstitute.com/
Wonderful post
I’ll set that up. And the T.A.M.I show