{"id":2170732,"date":"2025-11-21T17:28:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2170732"},"modified":"2025-11-21T17:28:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:28:46","slug":"cat-lady-music-lover-mixed-tape-connoisseur-meet-nlfbs-new-artistic-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/cat-lady-music-lover-mixed-tape-connoisseur-meet-nlfbs-new-artistic-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Cat lady, music lover, mixed tape connoisseur: Meet NLFB\u2019s new artistic director"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Winnipeg resident Kerri Stephens, who has extensive experience in the Canadian music industry, said she can\u2019t wait to get to know Sudbury<\/p>\n

\n

Kerri Stephens said when she was young, she used to make mixed tapes for the people she cared about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would talk on them, and I would personally introduce songs, and I would choose what songs that I think would really suit other people to listen to,\u201d she said, adding that making these tapes was a \u201clove language\u201d for her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI put a lot of thought into cassette tapes that I would make for friends, especially love interests that had no interest in me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently selected as the new artistic director of Northern Lights Festival Bor\u00e9al, Sudbury\u2019s storied annual summer music festival, Stephens said programming a music festival is a bit like creating a mixed tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that I love programming so much, because to me, it’s like building a big mixed tape that is like, what journey can I take the audience on?\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are some artists that I know that people are going to love? \u2026 It doesn’t have to be my favourite music. It doesn’t have to be even a CD that I would buy, but there’s certain times that you know, somebody is really good at what they do, and people are going to love that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens replaces Max Merrifield<\/a>, Northern Lights Festival\u2019s long-time artistic director, who had a life-long association with the festival.<\/p>\n

A resident of Winnipeg, Man., Stephens has extensive experience in the Canadian music industry, and said she\u2019s looking forward to introducing new music to NLFB, which runs July 10-12, 2026 in beautiful Bell Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the agents I know personally, a lot of the artists I know personally,\u201d she said. \u201cI know a lot about some of the up-and-coming and emerging artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens doesn\u2019t plan to move to Sudbury for her new role at this time, but hopes to be present here as much as possible, and said she\u2019s looking forward to getting to know local musicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want people to feel like it’s not like they have an AD that lives somewhere else, and doesn’t care,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cI do really care about building the community and helping build the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

A former touring musician herself (she said she writes \u201csad songs,\u201d but it\u2019s been some time since she released anything), Stephens spent nearly a decade at Winnipeg\u2019s West End Cultural Centre, including as the artistic director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided that I wanted to be the very first female artistic director at the West End Cultural Centre, and so that was my goal,\u201d Stephen said. \u201cAnd I worked really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the last three years, she\u2019s been a part of the artistic team at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, where her role includes overseeing the Young Performers Program and the Minsterel program.<\/p>\n

NLFB fits\u00a0within the same \u201ckind of pocket\u201d as the Winnipeg Folk Festival, in terms of the type of artists she feels comfortable bringing in.<\/p>\n

Although she\u2019s never performed at Northern Lights herself, Stephens said she knows lots of people from Winnipeg who have.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2020, she founded Lost Cat Artists, an artist management company currently working with 2025 Juno nominee The Secret Beach, 2025 WCMA winner Leaf Rapids, UK Superband Supalung, Petunia & The Vipers, Award winning Canadian Singer-Songwriter JP Hoe and Yukon multi-instrumentalist emerging artist Hendrika.<\/p>\n

Lost Cat is named for her cat Kevin, who survived both being run over by a quad and the devastating house fire that destroyed Stephens\u2019 home during the pandemic. He later went missing for seven months and was found living on a neighbour\u2019s property.<\/p>\n

Bonus content! Kevin the cat. Supplied<\/em><\/figcaption>
\n<\/figure>\n

Definitely a cat lady, Stephens mentions that she even has a tattoo of Kevin (but enough about her cat, because we maybe talked about him a little too much during our interview, and I jokingly promised her I\u2019d cut that down to a \u201cnon-insane amount\u201d).<\/p>\n

Stephen said she\u2019s excited to get to know Sudbury in her new role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really hope that they trust me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s not something that I take lightly. I really, really do try and build it out like a mixed tape \u2026 I have a lot of fun with this. I’m definitely very passionate as a music lover, so I’m very, very excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com\u2019s assistant editor. She also covers education and the art scene.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sudbury.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winnipeg resident Kerri Stephens, who has extensive experience in the Canadian music industry, said she can\u2019t wait to get to know Sudbury Kerri Stephens said when she was young, she used to make mixed tapes for the people she cared about. \u201cI would talk on them, and I would personally introduce songs, and I would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2170733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[417082],"class_list":["post-2170732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-northern-lights-festival-borealkerri-stephens-northern-lights-festival-boreal-artistic-directorkerri-stephens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Cat-lady-music-lover-mixed-tape-connoisseur-Meet-NLFBs-new.jpgw960.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2170732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2170734,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170732\/revisions\/2170734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2170733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2170732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2170732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2170732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}