Charlotte Cornfield is quitting her day job.

The Toronto singer/songwriter has been the music booker at Burdock since it opened in 2015. Programming two shows a night at the Bloor and Lansdowne brewery/concert venue has meant she’s spent the last four years almost literally surrounded by music, but in July she’s leaving it behind to focus on her own.

Cornfield released her new album The Shape Of Your Name on April 5, a gorgeous collection of detail-rich folk songs, and will take the time to regroup and figure out the next steps. Before all that, she’ll play a Venus Fest-presented concert – which we’re announcing here – on Friday, May 24 at the Baby G with Charise Aragoza (doors 8 pm, $15 at the door, $12 advance at venusfest.net).

We also have the debut of Cornfield’s new video for June, below. Directed by Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew and shot by her brother Joe Cornfield, it’s a one-shot mood piece that tracks through a crowd watching her play at a piano in a warehouse and then circles around her to reveal the people have been replaced by books.

The video was really filmed in one shot, though they needed a number of takes to make it work. “As soon as the camera went around the piano, Kevin would yell ‘alright everyone, disappear’ and then they’d have to hurry up the stairs to the mezzanine,” says Cornfield. “And two people had to stay down to throw the books on the floor.”

June was shot at Burdock’s storage warehouse, where they had to forklift the piano over a giant fence. So, much like the album it comes from, the venue – a laid-back, songwriter-friendly space conducive to experimenting and collaborating – is encoded in the song’s DNA.

“Throughout these last four years, my eyes have been totally opened up to the huge variety of things happening in the city,” she says. “It’s a good feeling to have so many of my inspirations be my own friends and peers in the community.”

Cornfield also says she’s noticed a positive shift in the scene, exemplified by promoters like the women and non-binary-focused Venus Fest.

“Having grown up in Toronto, the music scene was a real boys club. I never really felt like there was a space that I felt totally comfortable making music in,” she says. “I wanted to make sure that we supported young artists, women, non-binary, artists of colour. And now I definitely feel that there are so many people representing a wider variety of voices and prioritizing that. People are working together to change the way that music is presented in the city.”

When asked about her influences that she found from the venue, Cornfield rattles off a succession: Bernice and their related projects, Lido Pimienta, LUKA, Omhouse and the Weather Station. She took a lot of inspiration from the Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman, she says, who, like non-Torontonian influences Sharon Van Etten and Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, is able to write raw and honest songs while still being poetic.

One of the things you really notice in Cornfield’s songs is the specificity of the experiences she describes, like in June when she sings “I don’t know if it’s you or the shape of your name on the page that gets me every time.” It’s about the intensity of the feeling you get from seeing an important person’s name on your digital device or messaging platform, where much communication takes place now.

“Specifying the colour of a sweater or a location, that’s really specific to your time, your place – but I think that’s the stuff that is most relatable,” she says. “When I reflect on an experience, I like to think back on the details. What colour was the sky that day? What was the weather? What shoes were the person wearing? Those type of things really help to paint an image.”

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