Back to School Field Trip 2026: HIGHWAY

The Ministry of Phonic Services presents Back to School Field Trip 2026, a month-long festival of experimental sounds and actions across the urban refuse of Toronto.

Join us at the Highway on Wednesday, September 23rd. Email ministryphonicservices@gmail.com for the festival map, or message us on Instagram @ministryphonic.

Starting before 8:30pm, PWYC, no one turned away for lack of funds.

About the artists...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Precisely six HA’s. No more, no less. Say it right, laugh it right. The duo between Evelyn CJF Coyne (aka Pink Snail) and Nahrain Yousefian was a duo we first encountered while on tour in Kingston, a splintering party of electro-blasting percussion and mouse traps fitted with contact mics. They’ve always got some maniacal trickery up their sleeves, chuckling all the way.

Steff Juniper’s project of quivering enterprise brings in collaborator Mike Rosenthal with his homemade marimba. A new performance art combo that can traverse from drone, noise, and anywhere in between, we’re pumped to see whatever happens.

Shem Goldman’s project under the name shemona has gone through so many iterations – toying with metal sculptures, avant-pop futurism, and this Back to School edition built around intense alterations of the cello. A single pluck orbits round and twists and turns, piling on top of each other into a sheened cacophony. It was an absolute highlight for us to play around in her reams of sheet metal at the Leslie Lookout beach last year, and we're excited to have her back!

Blasting off with Emergency Euphoria. Nolan Hildebrand on power electronics, Roan Ma on violin. A combo so deadly powerful that keeps all the tight dynamics of a sightly EAI combo, but tormented with the edge of a knife til it vomits psychedelic rainbows. Nolan’s quick-flipping grasp of switching between processed and unprocessed sounds can sometimes be enough to distract from all the other sonic carnage wailing about.