What's on the horizon when Montreal's legendary music venues close

Our city has earned a reputation for its nightlife and music scene for over 100 years. From indie and French folk to jazz, hip hop, Afro-Latin, disco, thriving underground electronic scenes and LGBTQIA+ spaces, our city reverberates with a diversity of sounds and cultures that shape its unique landscape.

At the same time, cheap rent, a low cost of living, and accessible transit have historically made Montreal an attractive city, giving artists the freedom to explore their craft.

However, this landscape is changing.

While music venue closures are not new, the closure of historic venue La Tulipe in September 2024 serves as a stark reminder of the city’s ongoing neglect in safeguarding important cultural institutions, and points to a deeper issue.

Urban development, rising costs, and gentrification are not only contributing to the housing crisis across the province; they are posing major threats to our city’s cultural fabric. These shifts are steadily reshaping neighbourhoods, whether it’s the Quartier des Spectacles or the Plateau-Mont-Royal.

Iconic venues closed in the last decade

If you were to simply walk down from Sainte-Catherine Street West or Saint-Laurent Boulevard, it would be hard to miss the widespread development projects taking place.

Le Spectrum (1982 - 2007)

Le Spectrum was located right at the entrance of the Quartier des Spectacles where the building was razed and demolished to build the major condo complex Le Maestria we see today. Completely erasing a foundational piece of Montreal's musical history as if it never existed.

Once Cinéma Alouette in the 1950s and then Club Montreal, the venue was taken over in 1982 by Équipe Spectra that pioneered the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Les FrancoFolies and Montreal en Lumière until it was sold to Groupe CH in 2014. 

Between Le Spectrum (1,200 capacity) and Métropolis (2,200 capacity, now MTelus), these venues handled the bulk of mid-sized concerts in Montreal—big names and emerging artists alike. These names ranged from the Police, Miles Davis, and Beck to Billy Bragg, New Order, No Doubt, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, the Fugees, Sinéad O’Connor, and Smashing Pumpkins.

Cinéma Impérial (1913 - 2024)

A block over on Bleury, the theatre Imperial, once a declared heritage site, is now being reconverted into condominiums.

L’Escalier (2004 - 2020)

“Musicians and artists still have places (though very few) to perform, but these venues, struggling financially, can’t support them as they should. Even if L'Escalier had stayed open, it would likely be facing this same new reality,” says Felix-Antoine Morin, a former communications manager for L’Escalier.

L’Escalier, a hidden gem down Sainte-Catherine Street East towards le Quartier Latin, whose former employees also went on to open Le Divan Orange, was forced to close during the pandemic. The building is set to make way for a condominium project, according to Morin.

Morin continues to program shows at several locations in the city including La Petite Marche and Café La Ligne Verte, booking artists and projects that previously performed at L'Escalier.

Le Divan Orange (2004 - 2018)

Le Divan Orange on Boulevard Saint-Laurent played a pivotal role for emerging artists during what is now considered by many as the golden age for the Plateau's music scene where artists like Arcade Fire and Patrick Watson had their start.

After a series of failed businesses, the space was run by Aussenwelt, a non profit organization that promotes the works of local emerging artists, and that revived this iconic location to host pop-up exhibitions for a short period until the end of December 2024. The space is now vacant again and up for sale.

The Diving Bell Social Club (2018 - 2023)

“People should just make areas in front of the Diving Bell Social Club, in front of La Tulipe, places that got shut down because of noise complaining neighbours. I think it’s our duty as citizens who care about these things to make sure those remain the loudest parts of town,” says Diving Bell Social Club co-owner Austin Wrinch.

The Diving Bell Social Club was a staple for comedy, drag and indie artist communities alike in the Plateau before being closed due to noise complaints, and is now laying the foundations for their forever space a year later. 

The new venue will be the third iteration of the communities they've built following the Saint-Henri DIY space The Bog, then the Diving Bell. The name started as a running joke then began to reflect their idea of representing ‘third places’ as the intention behind their project. TBD also stands for ‘Le Troisième Bar Diffusion’, something they’re still playing around with.

Set in a large reconverted garage of an industrial building in Little Italy close to Beaubien metro, co-owners Wrinch and Evan Johnston are hoping this new location will keep the benefits of remaining central to the community but without running the risk of being next to residential areas. Wrinch and Johnston are hoping to open towards the end of 2025.

La Tulipe (1913 - 2024)

Originally known as Théâtre Dominion, La Tulipe stood for over a century at the corner of Papineau and Mont Royal Ave. This historic venue’s closure sparked protests in September 2024 following numerous noise complaints from a single resident—Pierre Yves Beaudoin, the real estate investor that bought and lives in the building next to the concert hall. 

The closure has led to a reassessment of the Plateau-Mont-Royal’s strictest noise regulations, followed by other boroughs like Ville Marie. The city made a bureaucratic “error” in its rezoning of the adjacent building from commercial to residential shortly after Beaudoin bought it, and has raised skepticism among many industry actors and members of the local music community.

What venue owners and artist communities are saying

Turbo Haus x GROWVE

“When we discuss soundproofing and permits I feel like we're having a disingenuous conversation. The number of actual noise complaints affecting these venues pales in comparison to the issue of real estate developers abusing the bylaws in place [...] to the detriment of the rest of the community,” says Turbo Haus owner Sergio Da Silva.

Turbo Haus has recently partnered with Blue Dog right next to the Diving Bell’s former venue, to host a wider programming of shows.

In addition, Turbo Haus, on St-Denis, is one of the very few venues in the city that offers a number of their events entirely for free.

“It literally has been the worst thing for my business ever, but my financial gains are not as important to me as community building and having a sustainable scene going forward,” continues Da Silva.

GROWVE is a prime example of that community spirit. The weekly Wednesday live jam sessions, run by trio Shayne Assouline, Shem Gordon, and Marcus Dillon, provide a stage for some of the city's rawest talents by blending hip hop, R&B, soul and jazz. GROWVE has also featured a number of local and international guest artists over the last 5 years on their stage. 

“Montreal is a great place to create your own opportunity. We’ve allowed the community to have something incredibly accessible and safe and we’ve also noticed a number of bands and other jam sessions form through the GROWVE community,” says Assouline.

Le Cypher X / Urban Science

Le Cypher X, is a jam collective formed in 2014 that has spent the last 10 years uniting emerging local talents and changemakers in hip-hop, soul and jazz on the same stage. The jam sessions began as a collaboration between members of Kalmunity, an improv collective with influences of reggae, afrobeat, soul, funk, hip-hop and disco, and Nomadic Massive, a multilingual hip-hop band. The collective is often credited by many artists in the community including Shayne Assouline and Shem Gordon from GROWVE as the launchpad that has helped shape their presence in the local scene. 

Since Le Cypher X and their in-house brass band, Urban Science, first began hosting jams it only took a couple months before they were booked by the International Jazz Festival de Montreal, where they have been invited to perform annually since. Le Cypher X’s jam sessions are now held every Thursday at O Patro Vys.

“Given the state of the laws and the way things are going, nightlife in Montreal will die. Unless you change these laws, it’s completely broken. It’s been for years,” says Le Cypher X band leader Vincent Stephen-Ong in response to the city’s re-zoning laws and noise complaints.

“I think we live in a landscape now where there are more opportunities than ever in terms of distribution because of the existence of the internet. What’s really being prevented here is we’re killing parts of the ecosystem. It’s one thing to be able to sing a song recorded in my home studio and put it out there. But guess what? I need to know how to perform in front of real people because that’s a whole other ball game.”

Editor's note: On the horizon

The Les Scènes de Musique Alternatives du Québec (SMAQ) has welcomed a new financial aid initiative from the City of Montreal aimed at supporting independent performance venues with fewer than 1,000 seats that have hosted at least 35 shows in the past year.

This program acknowledges the ongoing economic and regulatory challenges faced by small and medium-sized venues and underscores the need for sustained structural support. The initiative includes two funding streams:

• Individual support offering $40,000 per company
• Collective support of up to $100,000 for groups of companies

With a total budget of $855,757, the program is intended to help venues develop business projects, share resources, expand audiences, and boost attendance. The program opens March 27, 2025.

While SMAQ appreciates the effort, founder and general director Jon Weisz stressed the need for greater flexibility in funding criteria and the importance of direct, recurring support to ensure these venues’ long-term viability in a February press release. They pointed out that Montreal’s venues are excluded from this funding—only two of the city’s venues are able to access funds via this program—and are calling on the city to step in to offer robust and recurring funding for its venues.