Kerri Stephens said when she was young, she used to make mixed tapes for the people she cared about.
“I 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,” she said, adding that making these tapes was a “love language” for her.
“I put a lot of thought into cassette tapes that I would make for friends, especially love interests that had no interest in me.”
Recently selected as the new artistic director of Northern Lights Festival Boréal, Sudbury’s storied annual summer music festival, Stephens said programming a music festival is a bit like creating a mixed tape.
“I 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?” she said.
“What are some artists that I know that people are going to love? … 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.”
Stephens replaces Max Merrifield, Northern Lights Festival’s long-time artistic director, who had a life-long association with the festival.
A resident of Winnipeg, Man., Stephens has extensive experience in the Canadian music industry, and said she’s looking forward to introducing new music to NLFB, which runs July 10-12, 2026 in beautiful Bell Park.
“A lot of the agents I know personally, a lot of the artists I know personally,” she said. “I know a lot about some of the up-and-coming and emerging artists.”
Stephens doesn’t 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’s looking forward to getting to know local musicians.
“I want people to feel like it's not like they have an AD that lives somewhere else, and doesn't care,” Stephens said. “I do really care about building the community and helping build the festival.”
A former touring musician herself (she said she writes “sad songs,” but it’s been some time since she released anything), Stephens spent nearly a decade at Winnipeg’s West End Cultural Centre, including as the artistic director.
“I decided that I wanted to be the very first female artistic director at the West End Cultural Centre, and so that was my goal,” Stephen said. “And I worked really hard.”
For the last three years, she’s 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.
NLFB fits within the same “kind of pocket” as the Winnipeg Folk Festival, in terms of the type of artists she feels comfortable bringing in.
Although she’s never performed at Northern Lights herself, Stephens said she knows lots of people from Winnipeg who have.
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.
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’ home during the pandemic. He later went missing for seven months and was found living on a neighbour’s property.
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’d cut that down to a “non-insane amount”).
Stephen said she’s excited to get to know Sudbury in her new role.
“I really hope that they trust me,” she said. “It's not something that I take lightly. I really, really do try and build it out like a mixed tape … I have a lot of fun with this. I'm definitely very passionate as a music lover, so I'm very, very excited.”
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the art scene.