Orchestras Canada

Culture Days, a collaborative pan-Canadian volunteer movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement by all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities, is moving forward.  A National Steering Committee, in collaboration with provincial committees, is mobilizing at the grassroots level to collaborate in the implementation of concurrent annual province-wide public participation events each September beginning in 2010. In support of these annual provincial events, Culture Days will drive a major annual national communications & public relations campaign to help re-position arts and culture in the public eye.
 
Culture Days was initiated and is supported by the Canadian Arts Summit in collaboration with Culture pour tous (producer of Quebec’s Journées de la Culture), The Banff Centre and with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
 
Five provinces are lining up their efforts to be part of the Culture Days inaugural event in September 2010. These include Alberta (with Alberta Arts Days), Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario (with spOtlight) and Québec with the Journées de la Culture, which inspired Culture Days. Additional provinces and territories have expressed enthusiastic interest and we are confident others will join the collective effort soon.
 
For more information about the initiative, and to sign up for regular electronic updates, please visit here.

A number of Quebec orchestras and ensembles will be highlighting their new seasons through participation in Les Journées de la Culture, from September 25-27.  Les Journées are a project of Culture pour tous, an organization whose mission is to contribute to the democratization of culture in Quebec and which “arose from the firm conviction that the arts and culture are at the heart of Quebec’s social and economic development”.

From our quick scan of the website, we’ve identified the following orchestras as taking part in this year’s event:

• Les Violons du Roy (in collaboration with the Canadian Institute of Quebec) will present a free concert at the Gabrielle-Roy Library at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, under the leadership of their new resident conductor Eric Paetkau;
• The Orchestre symphonique de Laval will present an open dress rehearsal, led by music director Alain Trudel, featuring piano soloist Anton Kuerti on Sunday from 3-4:30 p.m. at the Chapelle de l’école secondaire Mont-de-La Salle in Laval;
• The Orchestre symphonique de jeunes Philippe Filion will present an open rehearsal and opportunity for discussion with the conductor and young musicians, Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon at the Centre des Arts in Shawinigan;
• The Orchestre symphonique de Lévis will present a concert with commentary entitled  entitled Mozart’s Requiem Demystified, Sunday from 2-3:30 p.m. at Église Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire in Lévis;
• The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne will present a reading of a new work by Denys Boulian, led by music director Lorraine Vaillancourt at Montreal’s Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur, Saturday from 2-5 p.m.

For more information about this remarkable, province-wide event, please click here.