Chris McKhool – 7x Canadian Folk Music Award winner, 2026 JUNO nominee for Children’s Album of the Year, and one of the country’s most beloved family entertainers – will be undertaking an eleven-date northern Ontario tour in celebration of his long-awaited new album Little Leaf.
Stopping in Fort Frances on May 4, the tour will also touch down in Iroquois Falls, Kirkland Lake, Cobalt, Sault Ste. Marie, Longlac, Geraldton, Sioux Lookout, Dryden, Kenora and Atikokan. As McKhool brings his joyful, fully interactive live show to communities across the region.
McKhool was most recently in Fort Frances as part of Tour de Fort’s 2023 season with his Sultans of String project.
Little Leaf marks McKhool’s first children’s album since FiddleFire, the release that won him the Canadian Folk Music Award for Children’s Album of the Year and earned his first JUNO nomination in the category, making it one of the most anticipated records of his three-decade career. According to McKhool, the album takes its guiding philosophy from the natural world.
“The songs speak to how all living beings around us are part of our community,” McKhool said.
“You can pick up a leaf and name it, when you name the plants and the animals around you, they become personal, and you see them as part of your circle. The children in our lives also represent little leaves, falling free from their parents and becoming independent, while forever connected to their family and natural environment.”
The album features many collaborations, with songs co-written by Ojibway Elder Duke Redbird alongside works by Canadian legends David Archibald and Bing Jensen.
The live show will feature many different aspects, part concert, part environmental celebration, and entirely participatory. Children will have the opportunity to join the band onstage to play percussion instruments from around the globe, dance to global grooves, and sing songs about caring for the planet.
McKhool is joined on tour by bandmates from Sultans of String, including Saskia Tomkins on fiddle and nyckelharpa and Kevin Laliberté on guitar. The ensemble brings the same warmth and virtuosity that has made Sultans of String a fixture on Canadian stages to the joyful, world-music-inflected sound of Little Leaf.
Chris McKhool will play at the St. Mary School gym as part of Kids and Company’s children’s entertainment series on Monday, May 4 at 6 p.m. Admission is free but donations are accepted.
