February 16th, 2026 by Brody Campbell
They’re not a cover band. They’re not your grandparents orchestra. I don’t know what you’d call them but they’re standing out.
Last night we went to Danforth music hall for an extended Valentine’s Day. And Strings From Paris set a mood.
The line was around the block when we got there but no one seemed to mind. Every person who walked past seemed in awe about how many people were there. One guy was holding a bouquet of flowers talking to someone on the phone saying “so you’re almost here”
When you walked through the door you had 3 choices of glow stick bracelet. Green was for “single”. Pink was for “taken”. And orange was for “it’s complicated”
And it’s not that I can’t explain to you what Strings From Paris is but it’s something different than most version of this that I’ve seen. It’s not a 40 piece orchestra. It’s certainly not just the accompanying band members to some other act. It’s 6 people on stage.
Aaron Paris who’s album “LOTUSLAND” is nominated for this years Instrumental Album Of The Year, started the group in 2022, and is joined by Jamie Godber Irvine, Andrew Park, Brendan Thomas, Adrian Irvine and Maddie Kay.
They’re doing compilations or melodies of your favourite songs. You’re encouraged to sing along. And people certainly did. It became a back and forth between the group and the audience. But not in your traditional call and response style. Or when the crowd is singing the words and the rapper stops to hear the audience. Strings From Paris didn’t pause in order to set the space for the crowd to jump in. The crowd would jump in because they know the songs and could hear where to put the vocals that weren’t there.
This show was also different than their usual set, part of why we were at the show was I didn’t get the chance to see them back in October when they performed Fresh Up. But this time they were join by special guests, each performed 1 or 2 songs and their bands melded with the ‘Strings.
They were joined first by Jjared who did a song he said had just recently premiered at Chris La Rocca’s show a few weeks ago, Chris also joined Jjared on stage to play the guitar. Along with his drums and another person on guitar.
646yf4t (baby fat) was the next guest, he’s also the younger brother to Daniel Caesar, from Toronto like the majority of SFP, he also performed at La Rocca’s show, and on our drive to that we discussed the spelling of his name and if it would help or hurt him when it came to SEO. Either way he definitely has the presence for the stage. He did two tracks. He held a small guitar and the way the strings would cut away to emphasize his lyrics hit like a beat drop on a song.
As they cycled between guests you got to see how uniquely they emphasized each artist. They were later joined by Justin Nozuka, he performed with a guitar. I hadn’t heard of him before. But Lisa’s showed me a collection of signed posters she had at her parents house so that’s co-sign enough for me.
He was great regardless of Lisa’s mom calling him “her first love” today at lunch. (Which I agreed)
Next came River Tiber who went between guitar and keyboard. As did Charlotte Day Wilson. When she came out she spoke about how much works goes into preparing for these shows and sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re there to have fun. But when she was watching SFP from side stage she could see how much fun they were having.
As the night was coming closer to an end Maddie, who’s originally from Hamilton, read some notes from a board they had out front. The first read “girl shoot your shot he might have a dying rich uncle”, another said “shoutout my Asian girls, let the lights dim sum - drake” and then came from one of the green wrist band wearing guys of the night who essentially wrote his tinder profile summary “24 - something something - i look like lil Romeo if you see me say hi”
Maddie read one more to end on a nice note but I can’t remember what it said. They then prepared the crowd for the last melody of songs suggesting now might be the time to “throw some a-s-s” keeping it pg.
They started playing “No Hands” by Waka Flocka Flame which definitely struck a chord with the crowd as everyone was undeniably moving. They went from this to Bad & Boujee by the Migos. Bad. And. Boujee. By. The. Migos. I don’t need to explain to you why this isn’t your grandparents string section. You can go find out for yourself. And you might be in luck because as we were leaving they closed out the night by saying “we might have to make this an annual thing so watch out for that”
So maybe we’ll see you next year at that.
