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Toronto · Venue

The Emmet Ray

A compact College Street whisky bar with a dedicated music room, The Emmet Ray pairs a deep spirits list with an unusually dense run of small-scale jazz sets.

Upcoming shows
60
Capacity
90
Address
924 College Street, Toronto, ON M6H 1A4
Phone
(416) 792-4497
Next show
Tue, 29 Sept 2026
Official siteDirections
The Emmet Ray in Toronto

About The Emmet Ray

The Emmet Ray is a Toronto whisky bar and live-music room with capacity for 90 standing or 56 seated guests. Its distinguishing feature is scale: this is a bar built around close-range listening, with a dedicated music room behind the front space and a whisky list exceeding 230 bottles. For concertgoers, the appeal sits in that compact setup: musicians and audience share a single, conversational room instead of a large club floor.

A bar with a working bandstand

The Emmet Ray opened in December 2009, taking its name from Emmet Ray, the fictional jazz guitarist at the centre of Woody Allen’s 1999 film Sweet and Lowdown. Its early identity already included live music: the Toronto Blues Society’s December 2011 listings placed regular Thursday performances at the College Street bar. That record matters because it shows the room operating as a recurring performance stop within two years of opening, alongside its food-and-drink business.

The room’s current programming keeps that working-musician character in view. On July 11, 2026, JazzInToronto presented a pay-what-you-can late-night jazz jam there, running from 11:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. The format offers a useful picture of the venue’s role: a small bar room supporting scheduled sets early in the evening and community-facing sessions after midnight.

The room today

Jazz drives the calendar, with modern jazz, hard bop, standards, vocal jazz, swing and improvised music appearing across several nightly time slots; soul, R&B, folk, indie rock, blues, funk and fusion broaden the edges. The booking pattern favors compact groups, trios, quartets, quintets and late jams, often with an early and later set on the same night. Expect a seated, intimate bar-room experience, a PA system, food and drinks in-house, and a dedicated performance area suited to attentive listening.

Sources

  1. The Emmet Ray — Tagvenue
  2. The Emmet Ray — Toronto Music Listings
  3. May 25, 2025: The Emmet Ray — Laura Marks
  4. Maple Blues, December 2011 — Toronto Blues Society
  5. JazzInToronto Presents: Late Night Jazz Jam — JazzInToronto

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