Orchestras Canada

From May 19-26, the members of I Musici de Montréal will embark on their third international tour of the season with a journey to Mexico for the Festival Cultural de Mayo. They’ll be led by Richard Lee (currently resident conductor with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra) and they’ll present a program of music by Tchaikovksy and Mussorgsky (in an arrangement made for I Musici by founding music director Yuli Turovsky). The Festival Cultural de Mayo facilitates exchange between Mexican artists and international colleagues, and this year, the focus is on Quebec – with over twenty artists and organizations from Quebec representing music, film, dance, circus arts and visual arts.

Meanwhile, members of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra have joined their long-time collaborators at Opera Atelier to accompany OA’s production of Lully’s Armide at the “spiritual home” of Baroque opera – the Royal Opera House at Versailles. You can read more about just what it took to make these performances happen, here.

Early last week, the nominations for this year’s Juno Awards (to be presented in Ottawa, March 26-31) were announced. We were delighted to see so many Canadian orchestras – along with the soloists and composers who enliven their seasons – honoured in the assorted classical categories.

Our particular congratulations to the following nominees:

Classical Album of the Year: Large Ensemble or Soloist(s) with Large Ensemble Accompaniment:

Alexandre Da Costa/Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Acacia Classics*Universal
Daugherty : Fire and Blood
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Orchestre Métropolitain ATMA*Naxos
Bruckner 4
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Orchestre Métropolitain ATMA*Naxos
Florent Schmidt- La tragédie de salomé

Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral Performance:

Marie-Josée Lord; Orchestre Métropolitain; Giuseppe Pietraroia ATMA*Naxos
Marie-Josée Lord
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra & Daniel Taylor Analekta*Select
J.S. Bach: Cantatas 70 & 154; Concerto 1060; Orchestral Suite No. 2

Classical Composition of the Year:

Jeffrey Ryan Naxos
Equilateral (recorded by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bramwell Tovey)

For a complete list of nominations, please visit junoawards.ca.

As living proof that there’s no rest for the wicked, we’ve been busy at Orchestras Canada in recent weeks! Here’s a quick update on a few of the things that we’ve been working on.

Youth Orchestra Task Force: Recruitment is complete, and we’re now working on scheduling the first meeting of a new task force that will study the current state and needs of Canadian youth orchestras. We are grateful to the following people for stepping forward to serve on the task force, east to west:
Ken MacLeod, New Brunswick Youth Orchestra (chair)
Louise Richard, Association des orchestres de jeunes du Quebec
John Gomez, Ottawa Youth Orchestra Academy
Diana Weir, Hamilton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra
Paul Dornian, Mount Royal Conservatory
Sheila Redhead, Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra

Comparative Reports for 2010-11: Do you love orchestra data? If so, we have a treat for you. With the co-operation of 65 Canadian orchestras, from small to huge, OC’s intrepid statistician, C. Stephen Smith, has completed work on this year’s Comparative Report – a compendium of contextual, financial and audience data from the 2010-11 season. While the detailed report is only available to participating orchestras, we’ve published two summary reports (by region of the country and budget size) on our website – and you can view them here.

Final touches are being put on a brand-new report by Kelly Hill of Hill Strategies Research, commissioned by Orchestras Canada with support from the Ontario Arts Endowment Fund. To complement our annual Comparative Report study, we’ve asked Kelly to report on the observable trends from six years of data from fifty consistently-participating Canadian orchestras, 2004-05 to 2009-10. Watch this space: we’ll let you know when it’s posted (in both languages, bien sûr!) on our website.

Planning for the National Orchestras Meetings in Montréal: The full program for the 2012 national orchestras meeting will start at 1 p.m. on Sunday, May 27 and it will wrap up at 12 noon on Tuesday, May 29. Confirmed program highlights include presentations by Professor Robert Flanagan, author of the recently-published The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras; key staff at HEC Montreal; Kent Nagano, music director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; and Robert Sirman, director of the Canada Council for the Arts. Delegates will also be attending a SOLD OUT concert by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, led by Maestro Nagano and featuring Cirque Eloize, in a new “imagining” of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. We are also planning a parallel program for symphony education and community engagement staff, May 28-29. For more information, click here.

This past weekend, members of the Orchestras Canada board of directors met in Toronto to kick off the development of a new strategic plan for OC. Working with Peter O’Donnell and Linda Spence of Healthy Futures Group, the OC board engaged in 1.5 days of intense discussion, attended performances by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and re-affirmed our belief that Canadian orchestras have an intelligent and brave group of directors working on their behalf. While the plan itself will not be complete for a number of months, we can hint that the following themes will almost surely be explored in it:

Smart positioning of Canadian orchestras – with government bodies, the Canadian public and businesses and philanthropic funders
Collective action – enhancing and expanding partnerships and collaborations
Network building – providing the tools and venues to Canadian orchestras to learn together, build common cause, and better support one another

Both Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the National Arts Centre Orchestra are on the road right now – and if you, like we, enjoy a bit of arm-chair travel, we’d invite you to follow these intrepid musicians via the blog postings they are filing from the road.

The National Arts Centre Orchestra is in the final stages of an Atlantic Canada tour, and you can stay current with their adventures here (postings in both English and French).

Tafelmusik is in the middle of a tour of the US, including a return visit to New York’s Carnegie Hall. You can find Tafel cellist Alan Whear’s occasional blog postings here.

We’ve got a pair of recommendations this week.

The first item is a report on the education programs of eight Canadian orchestras – the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Orchestra London, Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. The evaluation was undertaken by Measured Outcome, an organization that undertakes collaborative, web-based research on the impact of charitable programs, and the process gave voice to the experiences of students, teachers and orchestral musicians involved in the programs.

Key learnings?
99% of participating adults and students found the programs valuable;
96% plan to return in a subsequent year;
61% of young people get their first (and only!) exposure to symphonic performance through a school visit, compared with 24% who attend with family and 15% who attend with friends;
Only 62% of the participating teachers make use of the Study Guide material provided, and of those, only 17% (or 10.5% of the total number of participating teachers) make use of the podcasts provided;
Teachers, students and performers consistently report that rowdy behavior by certain attendees detracts from the overall experience;
There are a number of opportunities to strengthen these already-valued programs.

The report was the subject of Orchestras Canada’s first webinar for the 2011-12 season, an event that brought together over 20 representatives from member orchestras from Victoria to Halifax. We are committed to continuing the discussion with our member orchestras, with the goal of strengthening their programming and their opportunities for collaboration.

You can view the report here.

Our second recommendation? A major new research report on arts engagement, commissioned by the Ontario Arts Council, and undertaken by Alan S. Brown of Wolf Brown and Ipsos-Reid. The report builds on Brown’s existing body of work on arts engagement, and traces the connection between an individual’s “personal artistic practice” (be it listening to music on the radio, selecting CDs to purchase or tracks to download, taking music lessons, interpreting the work of others while performing as a soloist or in an ensemble, or creating new works of music) and their attendance at live performances. There are some particularly compelling findings about the levels of cultural participation of Ontarians from diverse cultural groups.

And we can’t resist leaving you with this inspiring statement:

“Overall, 95% of all respondents are interested in doing more arts activities than they presently do.”

You can find the report here.

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra has just announced the release of a new all-Bach recording on the Analekta label, featuring counter-tenor Daniel Taylor, violinist Jeanne Lamon and oboist John Abberger.

Works on the recording include Bach’s Cantatas BWV 70 & 154, the Concerto for oboe and violin, “after BWV 1060” and the Suite for violin and strings, “after BWV 1067”

The recording was done at Humbercrest United Church in Toronto, and it marks Tafelmusik’s 78th recording. To learn more, or to order a copy of the new CD, please visit Tafelmusik’s website.

On the heels of a successful tour of Western Canada that included 8 out of 9 sold out concerts, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra sets out today, February 18, on a week-long Ontario tour. In addition to evening concerts in Kingston and Ottawa and Family Day concerts at the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, Tafelmusik will enliven Ontario communities including Sharbot Lake, Port Perry, St. Mary’s, Windsor, Embro and Milton with a series of community outreach and free education concerts for elementary school students, as well as a masterclass for community musicians – the remarkable “TGIF” Kingston Community Strings, one of the five performing groups of the Kingston Symphony Association.

The orchestra is traveling with a mixed programme of baroque repertoire including music by Lully, JS Bach, CPE Bach, Fasch, and Dauvergne. John Abberger and Marco Cera will be the featured soloists in the Concerto for 2 oboes in D Minor by Vivaldi, and Abberger will join Music Director and violin soloist Jeanne Lamon for the Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor.

www.tafelmusik.org

Toronto Symphony Orchestra Triumphs in Florida
Earlier this week, TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra returned from a critically-acclaimed series of concerts in a six-city tour of Florida. And from all accounts, it was a smashing success! Here’s what the reviewers had to say:

“These musicians gave one of the most virtuosic, fascinating performance this reviewer has ever heard… It was certainly evident throughout the evening that this huge ensemble is a band of virtuosos, capable of executing the finest nuances of dynamics, phrasing and tonal beauties.” – Palm Beach Daily News

“The warmness in all the brass playing throughout the night was a highlight of the concert, and was never displayed better than in the symphony’s uplifting final movement, with its triumphant trumpet flourishes.” – Orlando Sentinel

“The Toronto Symphony is a first-class ensemble that gave immaculately prepared, spontaneously played performances of works by Barber, Tchaikovsky and Canadian composer Gary Kulesha under music director Peter Oundjian.” - South Florida Classical Review

For tour photos and more, please visit tsoontheroad.wordpress.com.
Tafelmusik Visits Western Canada
Those indefatigable world travelers, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, are heading out on a western Canada tour today. They have concerts in Victoria (Jan. 22), Salt Spring Island (Jan. 23), Vancouver (Jan. 26), Kelowna (Jan. 27), White Rock (Jan. 28), Edmonton (Jan. 29) and Calgary (Jan. 30 and 31). On tour, Tafelmusik presents a mixed programme of baroque repertoire including music by Lully, JS Bach, CPE Bach, Fasch, and Dauvergne. John Abberger and Marco Cera will be the featured soloists in the Concerto for 2 oboes in D Minor by Vivaldi, and Abberger will join Music Director and violin soloist Jeanne Lamon for the Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor. Tafelmusik musicians will also be involved in Artist Training initiatives — masterclasses and workshops with the University of Victoria, the Calgary Youth Orchestra and the University of Calgary — that are part of Tafelmusik’s Baroque Mentors training programmes for emerging artists, a year-long series of masterclasses and residencies in universities across Canada. For detailed information about tour dates and venues, visit Tafelmusik’s website www.tafelmusik.org.

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra has just launched its new Baroque Mentors training program for emerging artists. The program is a season-long series of masterclasses in Toronto and residencies in universities across Canada, and allows emerging artists to learn directly from Tafelmusik musicians and such distinguished international artists as soprano Johannette Zomer (Holland), soprano Dorothee Mields (Germany), tenor Charles Daniels (England), baritone Peter Harvey (England), fortepianist Richard Egarr (England) and violinist Stefano Montanari (Italy).

Participating universities include the University of Toronto, University of Windsor, University of Western Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University, and University of Victoria.

Many of the students reached through Baroque Mentors are being introduced to period performance for the first time, while experienced period players or singers are able to access training at the highest level by the leading teachers in the field.

For more information about Tafelmusik and its Artist Training and Education programmes, visit tafelmusik.org.

At its recent Annual General Meeting, Tafelmusik announced its 10th consecutive operating surplus. And what a decade it has been: during this era (a time that corresponds with the administrative leadership of Tricia Baldwin), Tafelmusik has nearly doubled annual revenues from $2.6 million to $5.1 million, increased artistic activity and creative programming; remained debt-free; tabled ten consecutive balanced budgets; eliminated the accumulated deficit; created surplus funds for future artistic projects and as a cushion to ensure stability into the future; and built its Endowment to $1.6MM to provide income in perpetuity. Board Chair David Linds thanked Music Director Jeanne Lamon and all the musicians, Managing Director Tricia Baldwin and the staff team, and the Tafelmusik Board of Directors for an outstanding season that represented a string of successes at home and on the world stage.

“Tafelmusik’s vision is to be an international centre of musical excellence in period performance for generations to come,” said Tricia Baldwin, Managing Director. “The 2009/10 season underscored this vision with an impressive array of home, international touring and filming activities. Tafelmusik proudly represented Canada on international tours to Italy, Germany, Mexico, the USA, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, as well as continuing its national touring, this time in Quebec.”