As Calgary grows closer to a population of two million people, artists from other cities are taking notice.
At one time, local artists and performers often felt the need to leave the city to develop a career in the arts: Tegan and Sara, Tate McRae, Lindsey Ell, Melissa O’Neill, among others.
However, as the local cultural scene grows with the city, some have decided to make Calgary their new home, arriving here from other provinces and farther afield.
Here are five artists from various disciplines — producer, visual arts curator, hip-hop performer, jazz pianist and actor — who came from cultural hubs to immerse themselves in the local arts community. They came from Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal and even Glasgow, Scotland to make their mark.
This is what drew them to the city, as told to Postmedia’s Eric Volmers.
Matthew Mooney: Actor
The path to Calgary’s theatre scene was not straightforward for Scottish actor Matthew Mooney.
He traces it back to the documentary Home by Squamish, by B.C.-based filmmaker Jen Randall. His friend showed it to him when they shared a flat in Edinburgh.
The film chronicles the U.K. adventurer Sarah Outen’s 4.5-year quest to traverse the globe by bike, kayak and row boat. Mooney admired the film and began looking for information about it. He found out it had won the Best Exploration and Adventure Film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 2019, which eventually led to him looking up Banff and discovering the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.</span>
“I was in awe of it: An arts facility of that capacity,” he said. “What was in the Rockies was unbelievable. I had never seen anything like it in the world. The location of it and what it provides was incredible.”
So Mooney made a plan. He would travel to Canada and eventually perform at the centre as an actor.
In 2023, he left Scotland for a job at a hotel in Canmore. He was there for only four days when the job fell through, which led him to the “nearest big city.” Mooney hitch-hiked to Calgary and eventually landed a position at Trickster Theatre, which had him working with children in 17 schools across the province.
That same year, he was accepted into Theatre Calgary’s emerging artist program and played Bottom in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While still in rehearsals for that production, Theatre Calgary offered him a role in The Mousetrap.
In 2025, Alberta Theatre Projects cast him as Ichabod Crane in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a production that would eventually make it’s way to The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
“As I turned 31, I was driving to the centre for the lead in Sleepy Hollow,” he said.
Mooney continues to work for Trickster and has performed in eight professional theatre productions since arriving in Calgary and has auditioned for roles in film and TV. He has no plans to leave for Toronto or Vancouver.
In February, he participated in the Werklund Centre’s TD Amplify: Episode 2 and will next appear in Hurry Hard at the Rosebud Theatre of the Arts in April.
“The main reason was the Banff Centre for me to arrive and I was aware that things like Fargo and The Last of Us had filmed in Calgary, so it made me thing there was a bit of a scene in film and TV,” he said. “But I was surprised about how much of a scene there is in Calgary for theatre. It’s amazing.”
Matthew Mooney in TD Amplify: Episode 2 at the Werklund Centre. Photo by Mike Tan.
Mona Filip: Chief curator at Contemporary Calgary
Mona Filip’s first exhibition as chief curator of Contemporary Calgary gave her the opportunity to explore the rich visual arts scene in Calgary and surrounding area.
Entwined, an exhibit featuring 19 artists and collectives that runs until March 15, features work from around Canada and the globe. But Filip made an effort to connect with as many locals as possible — Alana Bartol, DaveandJenn, Adrian Stimson, Tyler Los-Jones, Sandra Sawatzky and Glenna Cardinal and seth cardinal dodginghorse are among the local artists who contributed.
Originally from Bucharest, Romania, Filip came to Calgary from Toronto last May after working as curator at both the University of Toronto’s Art Museum and the Koffler Gallery. Her past projects have included the “intersections of collective memory, place and belonging.”
The local artists shared similar interests.
“It’s a deeply human endeavour to figure out our place in the world,” she said. “I do find here in Calgary, artists are engaged with the geography, the economics and the things that are really specific to this place. The way that I curated my first exhibition, Entwined, was a way for me to start gaining a deeper understanding of the relationships in place in the city and in the region.”
What specifically attracted Filip to the city was the opportunity to work at Contemporary Calgary, a gallery in the midst of an early and significant transformation even though it only opened its doors in 2020.
The $150-million renovations will transform the former Centennial Planetarium into a community hub with a new entrance pavilion, cafe, gift shop, a three-floor education and gallery wing that includes a rooftop event centre, and park space with a sculpture garden.
“I applied for it because the institution made a really strong impression,” she said. “I was familiar with its reputation and growing profile, but looking more attentively through the job posting at how the institution defines itself, what its plans are, its vision, was really exciting for me. It seemed to be in a really good moment for someone who could contribute to further developing that vision.”
While her former home of Toronto may undeniably have a bigger cultural scene than Calgary, Filip said she feels a hunger and passion in this city.
“A main difference would be that culture is more taken for granted in Toronto,” she said. “It has more readily available but at the same time it’s maybe less appreciated because it’s a given.
“I find here a lot more enthusiasm in the public about all these changes, the transformations and the revitalization of downtown. Toronto is a bigger city, bigger arts community, bigger public for art, but it’s not as excited with that palpable desire for culture that I sense is here.”
Mona Filip, Contemporary Calgary’s new chief curator, poses by works by Ari Bayuaji from the exhibition ‘Entwined’ on Wednesday, January 7, 2026. Brent Calver/Postmedia
K-Riz: hip-hop artist, educator
In 2018, hip-hop artist K-Riz made the trip from his home in Edmonton to Calgary to participate in a showcase called 10 at 10.
It was at the Commonwealth Bar and Stage, part of a series designed to highlight the depth of talent in the city’s hip-hop and R&B scenes.
“It was a random Wednesday and it was packed at the Commonwealth,” recalls K-Riz. “I loved that. No disrespect to Edmonton, but that was just something that hand’t been done out there. So being able to nurture relationships with music lovers over time has been such a gift and that’s what enticed me more to come this way.”
“It was just for local and Alberta artists to come in and jump on stage for about 10 minutes. It was ramped, as if there was a big artist in the building. That’s very rare to see for a local-artist showcase.”
By the time K-Riz relocated to Calgary permanently in 2021, he was a 15-year veteran of the Alberta scene with strong roots in the Canadian hip-hop and DJ community.
Born and raised in Toronto, K-Riz would make frequent trips to visit his DJ father in Edmonton before finally moving to the city in his late teens. His uncle performed hip-hop under the name E-Dot in Edmonton before moving to Toronto and performing with Darp Malone in a band called Hero.
So he was no newbie by the time he made Calgary home.
While 10 at 10 no longer exists, there are other showcases in the city that offer opportunities for performing. That includes Ship Hop, a quarterly showcase at the Ship and Anchor.
“It has definitely evolved,” said K-Riz. “Just seeing hip-hop artists at the National Music Centre for example, or at the King Eddy. Having younger artists who are in hip-hop or R&B at the National Music Centre is very important. It gives the younger artists something to look forward to.”
Recently, K-Riz participated in another project to showcase the local scene. He was one of 21 Alberta musicians who participated in LYFE (Lost Yesterday, Found Eternity), a 12-track album mixes R&B, hip-hop and Afrobeats.
He also recently took a job at the National Music Centre as an educator, where he works with students from Grades 2 to 8.
“We teach them about rhythm, listening to each other, playing together and let them explore music where they normally wouldn’t get a chance to,” he says. “You never know where these kids are coming from. So it’s seeing their faces light up.”
Calgary’s K-Riz opened for Talib Kweli Monday night at Winterruption. Photo by Fish Griwkowsky
Chris Tauchner: Jazz pianist
Chris Tauchner was not completely unfamiliar with Calgary when he moved here with his wife and children in August 2022.
Tauchner lived here from 1980 to 1987 as a child. But he still didn’t know what to expect as a professional jazz musician leaving Montreal, the jazz capital of Canada, for the home of the Calgary Stampede.
“I had come to grips with the fact that I might have to join a country band,” he says. “I said I’ll buy a hat and I might even buy some boots at some point. I haven’t had the opportunity yet.”
To be clear, Tauchner was not enticed to Calgary because of its jazz scene. He came to the city because his wife had the opportunity to do a fellowship in skin pathology following a residency at McGill.
Calgary doesn’t compete with Montreal in terms of jazz, of course. That city’s heritage in the genre goes back to the 1920s, if not earlier, and it has nurtured talent such as Oscar Peterson. In July, when it hosts the International Jazz Festival, Montreal becomes “the biggest jazz city in the world.”
But Tauchner soon discovered the Calgary scene punched above its weight and has become one of this city’s busiest musicians.
“I was given some names — ‘you should check out this drummer, you should check out this bass player’ — so that sort of gave me hope that I could meet some of the people in the community and there was something going on here,” he said.
With the Chris Tauchner Trio , the pianist has developed a show based on turning Tragically Hip songs into jazz numbers. He plays with the Calgary Jazz Orchestra and the Ninth Avenue Band. He performed as part of Poethree, a “spoken-word funk-fusion jazz quartet” led by Calgary’s former Poet Laureate Wakefiled Brewster, and hosted jazz jams at both the Kawa Espresso Bar and Gravity in Inglewood. Recently, he accompanied former Nylons singer Micah Barnes masterclass The Art of Vocal Jazz Performance.
“As you build your reputation in the city, you get more and more calls,” he said.
“There’s a little cafe called Coffee Cats Cafe and they have a series there of jazz singers. Someone took a chance on me one time and I played with them. There were five singers in the club that night and they all booked me for gigs in the future.”
Jazz pianist Chris Tauchner was photographed at his Calgary home on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. Photo by Gavin Young/Postmedia
Junia-T: Hip-hop artist, producer
“As a city, Calgary knows how to have fun.”
This may seem somewhat vague reasoning for a Polaris Prize short-listed hip-hop artist to abandon Toronto and make a new home in Calgary, as rapper and producer Junia-T did in the fall of 2025. But that seems to be the main thrust for the move: playing in a club filled with supportive people and friendly faces.
“Calgary goes out to enjoy itself at everything and I think that’s something I’ve missed for awhile because of Toronto,” Junia-T said in an interview.
“You’ve got to impress Toronto for them to have a good time. It doesn’t matter if they’ve paid for the ticket to come see the show. They will fill up the house but they’ll look at you like ‘you’ve got to impress.’
“Coming to Calgary has been really dope, to see people come out and have a good time even if they don’t know the music, they’ll just go to experience the music and then have a good time. I’ve gone to a bunch of shows and that’s been a consistent experience.”
Events such as 10 at 10, which used to be held at the Commonwealth Bar & Stage and would showcase hip-hop artists “blew my mind.”
“In the east, when you do underground hip-hop programming, very few people do it right in a sense that they get a diverse turnout,” he said. “But with 10 at 10 it was consistent. It was always well-attended and also very diverse in attendance. There were so many different types of things.”
Junia-T kicked off Black History Month celebrations last month, spinning hip-hop deep cuts at the National Music Centre. He has toured the world as Jessie Reyez’s live DJ and recorded with Cadence Weapon. His 2020 debut, Studio Monk, was short-listed for the Polaris Prize. Since coming to Calgary, he produced work for Calgary artists Tea Fannie and Bijaan.
While Calgary’s scene may be relatively young compared to Toronto’s, it’s finding a unique sound, he said.
“The sound is being defined by its current representatives,” he said. “Calgary is still a fresh area for talent that hasn’t been distracted by the industry.”
Hip-hop artist and producer Junia-T. Photo by Yamagucci.
ADDITIONAL COVERAGE
Go to calgaryherald.com/countdown-to-2-million to see more.
Bookmark this website and support our journalism: Subscribe now so you don’t miss the news you need to know and sign up for our free newsletters.