Evenko promotes all concerts at Montreal's Bell Centre and stages over 1,000 shows annually, as well as music festivals like Osheaga Music & Arts, Heavy Montreal and îleSoniq. The promoter also stages events in the sports, comedy, variety entertainment spaces.
Grondin died last year due to a sudden heart attack after a 45-year career as a radio station host at CHOM, CKOI and Radio VM, which included becoming a music programmer at Cogeco Media in 2011. Within hours of his death, his family, which includes his sons, the Quebec actors Marc-Andre and Mathieu Grondin, responded by urging anyone looking to honour Denis' memory to donate to the evenko foundation.
"It's with deep sadness, but also with great pride that we're asking you to be generous with the evenko foundation," the family said in a statement at the time.
The Montreal-based foundation, the charitable arm of Quebec concert promotion giant evenko, works to encourage young people to take up the performing arts by putting musical instruments into local public schools. To date, it has $360,000 worth of musical instruments into Quebec schools.
"It's important to give youth the means to express themselves musically. The price of a drum set or a saxophone shouldn't stand in the way of creativity. Teaching a teenager to play an instrument in a band means teaching him sensibility, attentiveness and empathy," Marc-Andre Grondin said in a statement.
"We draw particular attention to the generosity of the artists and the devotion of the music teachers that inspire youth to discover and practice performing arts," Roman Oryschuk, chairman of the board at the evenko foundation, said in his own statement.
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