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As the name implies, The Town Band Festival specializes in
band music with a jazz appearance by a band called The Dixieland Jazz Cats on
Saturday, July 9. Information is accessible on the internet at www.townbandfestival.com, by
calling the toll-free number 1-800-294-1032, or emailing townbandfestival@rogers.com.
The Elora Festival has a generous supply of classical,
choral, and baroque performers along with five shows by Starlight Jazz and
Blues on July 15, 16, 22, and 23. For more information, go to their
website at www.elorafestival.com,
telephone 1-519-846-0331, or e-mail info@elorafestival.com.
Domaine Forget is a Quebec music festival that ‘has re-united world-renowned
musicians… and has earned an enviable reputation …’ From mid-July to early
August, various Quebec jazz artists will be performing, including Trio Daniel
Marcoux, David Jacques, Carmen Genest and Sylvain Neault. Domaine
Forget’s website is www.domaineforget.com
and their toll-free number is 1-888-336-7438.
Also in Quebec, at Festival de Lanaudière, legendary
Montreal bassist Michel Donato will be playing with Fortin Leveille, a
‘gypsy jazz’ quintet on Sunday, July 17 at 2pm. This festival takes place in
Joliette, Quebec, approximately 90 minutes north-east of Montreal. Lanaudière’s
website is www.lanaudiere.org, and
their telephone number is 1-800-561-4343.
Back in Ontario, a quintet led by Toronto saxophonist Paul
Pacanowski will play at the Collingwood Music Festival on Friday,
July 15 at 2pm. Further information is available at www.collingwoodmusicfestival.com,
by calling 1-888-283-1712, or emailing info@collingwoodmusicfestival.com.
Parry Sound’s Festival of the Sound celebrated its 25th
anniversary in 2004, and will begin its jazz programming with a concert by
trombonist Alistair Kay on July 15. The mid-summer long weekend hosts
the Jazz Canada Weekend in Parry Sound, and jazz concerts will take place
from July 29-31. Performances will include Dave Young, Ranee Lee,
Phil Nimmons, Peter Appleyard, and Jane Bunnett. For more
information, go to www.festivalofthesound.on.ca
, call toll-free 1-866-364-0061, or e-mail info@festivalofthesound.ca.
The event that could be the highlight of the summer is the Kincardine
Summer Music Festival, which combines classical and jazz concerts as well
as a series of workshops and educational events designed for students of all
ages and levels. This vacation destination on Lake Huron will feature jazz
vocalist Lisa Martinelli on Monday, August 1, Malone, McMurdo, and
Dean on August 2, guitar great Lorne Lofsky on August 3, pianist Renee
Rosnes on August 4, and a jazz student concert on August 5.
Kincardine’s toll-free number is 1-866-453-9716, their website is www.ksmf.ca, and the festival’s email address is
info@ksmf.ca.
Many, if not all of these festivals have something to offer fans
from a variety of musical backgrounds, including jazz. The towns are rural,
picturesque, and the music will no doubt be sweet and swinging. A definite
consideration for summer leisure activities.
Yankee gold?
Exploring the other
horseshoe
by Phil Ehrensaft
Greater Toronto’s Golden Horseshoe is spilling across the Canada-U.S.
border and joining forces with a corridor that runs from Buffalo through
Syracuse along the southern shore of Lake Ontario.
Music
lovers in Canada’s economic capital are well advised to keep abreast of the
rich opportunities that await us in the Horseshoe’s southern wing, particularly
during the summer music festival season.
On the western tip of the corridor, there’s the venerable Chautauqua
Institute, an hour’s drive from Buffalo.
The landmark Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., located in
Syracuse’s eastern hinterland, anchors the other tip.
To
put the driving time into perspective, the distance from WholeNote’s offices at
Bathurst and Bloor to Montreal’s Place des Arts is actually a bit longer than
the distance to the farthest point of the Horseshoe, Cooperstown (542 km vs.
517 km).
Log
in another 130 km beyond the Golden Horseshoe South and you’re in Tanglewood,
the Boston Symphony’s resplendent summer home.
Make that 160 km and you’ve arrived at the Bard Music Festival, a
highlight of New York’s musical season.
Its concerts and seminars focus on the works and larger cultural context
of a specific composer. Last year
featured Shostakovich. This year it’s
Aaron Copland.
The
closest gem is the 25th anniversary of the University at Buffalo’s eminent new
music festival (June 6-11). Morton
Feldman created this concert/workshop festival during his 15-year stint at the
university. Now called June in
Buffalo, the 2005 edition features a most impressive roster of
composers: Simon Bainbridge, David
Felder, Brian Ferneyhough, Alvin Lucier, Philippe Manoury, and Christopher
Rouse. The university also hosts an
international flute festival and training institute, Pantasmagoria (July
7-15).
Chautauqua was, and is, an
important force in creating an American passion for continuing education and
the democratization of high culture.
Founded in 1874, the Institute provided a bucolic setting where vacation
time was devoted to a heady mixture of literature, music, art, religion and
physical exercise. On an average summer
day, 7,500 people attend an event or a class.
The musical component includes a resident symphony orchestra, opera, and
chamber music. I especially recommend
Robert Ward’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, The Crucible, based on the
Arthur Miller play (July 22 and 25).
Rochester
hosts the Eastman School, the serious contender to Julliard as America’s
premier conservatory. That crown jewel
is the nucleus of a musical life which could not be imagined in any other city
of equivalent size, or even larger.
Watch their web site, listed below, for summer concert listings.
Jazz,
however, is the big news in Rochester’s summer season. First there’s a benefit, Swing ‘n Jazz,
for The Composer Project, a wonderful foundation that brings
professional musician/composers into high schools and colleges (June 3-5). That’s followed by Rochester’s new jazz
festival, founded by Canadian jazz saxophonist John Nugent. It has achieved
heavy-hitter status in just four years, featuring the likes of Sonny Rollins,
Bill Frisell, Chick Corea and John Scofield (June 10-18).
My
personal favourite in the Golden Horseshoe South corridor is Glimmerglass,
the king of summer opera in the U.S.
The Cooperstown High School auditorium was the humble site of the first
Glimmerglass productions in 1975. Since
1987, home base is an acoustic and visual jewel, the Alice Busch Theater,
featuring sliding side walls that permit the hall to open up to the great
outdoors.
The
rise of Glimmerglass from a community event to national prominence is
inextricably linked to the unusual career path of its brilliant artistic director,
Paul Kellogg. Originally a French
teacher in Manhattan, Kellogg resigned in 1975 to write and manage his farm in
Cooperstown. Glimmerglass asked him to
become its general manager in 1978, and the rest is history. Kellogg’s innovations at Glimmerglass led to
an appointment as both general and artistic director of a floundering New York
City Opera in 1996. The City Opera is
very much revived and enjoys close links with Glimmerglass, where Kellogg
continues to work his wonders.
The
aesthetic emphasis at Glimmerglass is a delightful reversal of the usual
priorities in opera house programming: 1) modern; 2) lesser known; and 3)
familiar operas. The modern works this
year are Britten’s Death in Venice and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine. The lesser known are Lucie de Lammermoor,
the revised Paris version of Donizetti’s Lucia, and Massenet’s Le
Portrait de Manon. The familiar is Cosi
Fan Tutti.
Lead
roles are typically allocated to excellent vocal talents on their way up, but
not yet marquee names.
Glimmerglass
is also a mentoring experience for over 200 young professionals in every
dimension of activity that makes opera tick.
The atmosphere is permeated by the wonderful optimism of young talent
about to tackle the world.
Golden Horseshoe South web sites:
June in Buffalo www.music.buffalo.edu/juneinbuffalo/2005
Pantasmagoria (Buffalo) www.pantasmagoria.com
Chautauqua www.ciweb.org
Rochester www.rochester.edu/Eastman/concerts/calendar.php
www.rochesterjazz.com
www.swingnjazz.org/index.html
Glimmerglass Opera
(Cooperstown) www.glimmerglass.org
Tanglewood (Lennox, MA) www.bso.org
Bard Music Festival
(Annandale-on-Hudson) www.bard.edu/bmf/2005