Northern Dial Artist Profile

TAURO

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

TAURO formed in Toronto from the unlikely but productive meeting of two different musical backgrounds: jazz pianist and singer-songwriter Cynthia Tauro and Brendan Canning, co-founder of Broken Social Scene. The pair met around Toronto's Field Trip festival in 2022 and began writing together soon afterward, using informal sessions to find common ground between Tauro's jazz training and Canning's long history in indie rock, electronic music and collaborative band culture. Their 2024 debut single "Great Minds" introduced a down-tempo sound drawing from alternative R&B, soul, trip-hop and keys-forward pop rather than trying to reproduce either member's established lane.

The project developed through singles including "You Got Something" and "Change Is Strange," with "Great Minds" reaching the CBC Music Top 20. TAURO's recordings have involved a wider Toronto network that includes musicians and producers connected to Jessie Reyez, Daniel Caesar, Sam Roberts Band and other parts of the city's contemporary music community. That collaborative structure is central to the project: the songs are built less around a fixed genre than around the interaction between Tauro's harmonic instincts and Canning's atmospheric, groove-oriented approach.

By 2026, TAURO had moved from a singles project into its first album-length statement, Act I. The record centres change, distance and emotional recalibration while keeping the project's blend of indie, soul, jazz, R&B and trip-hop deliberately fluid. TAURO matters within the current Toronto scene because it connects generations and networks that are often discussed separately: a younger jazz-rooted songwriter, a veteran of Canada's internationally influential indie-rock era and a circle of contemporary producers working across R&B and pop.