TORONTO - Like the ill-fitting black suit he was wearing on Thursday night at Koerner Hall, there was something about Steven Page's collaboration with Toronto's chamber-pop outfit, Art Of Time Ensemble, that didn't quite work.

Currently touring Canada together in support of their challenging new album, A Singer Must Die, featuring Page covering some of his favourite songs by the likes of Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, Leonard Cohen, and Radiohead, often in drastically re-arranged classical form, the pairing is well-intentioned but the execution is far from consistent.

Page, who used to sing straight-ahead, often funny, pop rock songs for the last 20 years in Toronto's Barenaked Ladies until he left the band in February 2009, clearly he has great taste in music and a big-sounding tenor that serves him well.

But he is often let down but the arrangements of the songs, both on the record and in a live setting, where his sheer charisma, sense of humor and stage presence rescued the music from itself.

The performances ranged from pretty and sweet (The Weakerthans' Virture The Cat Explains Her Departure, Wainwright's Foolish Love, Cohen's A Singer Must Die), to humourous (BNL's Running Out Of Ink, Magnetic Fields' For We Are The King of The Boudoir which included the use of a mega-phone) to soulful (The Beatles' Oh! Darling) to downright awful (Jane Siberry's The Taxi Ride, Radiohead's Paranoid Android.)

The entire concept seem to be inspired by Philip Glass' 1986 collaborations with pop stars, Songs From Liquid Days, including Changing Opinion, with Paul Simon, which Page talked about hearing for the first time when he was 16, and performed on Thursday night.

Clearly, Page was excited about playing in such a formal and beautiful hall, dominated by blond, curved wood which made for crystal clear acoustics.

"Wow, Koerner Hall's is awesome," he said after his first song, The Mountain Tops' Lion's Teeth. "They did it right."

He even strapped on an acoustic guitar to play during Costello's I Want You, admitting it was folly to perform in front of the six accomplished musicians backing him up - Andrew Burashko (piano/artistic director), Benjamin Bowman (violin), Rob Carli (sax), Amy Laing (cello), Joe Phillips (bass), and Rob Piltch (guitar).

But he did it anyways.

After a troubled year before leaving BNL - he was arrested for cocaine possession and he dealt with the elephant in the room on Thursday night when he talked about going to the men's room: "Not for that. I know you read the papers" - kudos to Page for being brave and willing to fail in a very public way.

Page's attempt to re-invent himself will be further revealed later this year when he releases a solo album.

Let's hope it's a better fit.