When it became apparent that the pandemic was not going to be a two-month event and was in fact going to be with us for many months, Tricia Baldwin asked herself, “What can we do to amplify the voices and creativity of artists, students, creators and educators?” As the director of the Isabel Bader Centre for Performing Arts in Kingston, Ontario (known simply as “The Isabel”), Baldwin, and her colleagues, recognized not just a need, but an opportunity. The result is the IMAGINE project.
“This COVID-19 period is an excellent time for artists to immerse themselves in artistic ‘R&D’ to explore new collaborations, styles, concepts and performance practices and come out of the pandemic with enriched artistic voices,” Baldwin told me. With performance demands severely curtailed, many artists have time now to dig into projects and ideas that they might not normally have the energy and brain space to pursue. As well, performing has taken on new dimensions, hastened by the pandemic, with online presentations and streaming increasingly becoming the norm.
Baldwin and her colleagues wanted to offer The Isabel, with its state-of-the-art lighting, video and audio equipment – along with the acoustical beauty the hall is renowned for – to artists so they could learn new skills and ways of presenting their works. “We see this as an incubator, not only for new works but for new performance practices and processes,” said Baldwin. “We want to give people a safe space to work in so they can take artistic risks and try out different media.”
When the call for applications went out via getacceptd.com, The Isabel was initially planning to offer five or six spots in the program. However, they got such an enthusiastic response from the artistic community, receiving applications from a range of musicians, performers and educators with interesting ideas, that Baldwin approached the Kingston-based Ballytobin Foundation to increase the funding. Ballytobin willingly stepped up, and the result was that The Isabel was able to offer spots to 20 different groups/artists.
“The entire arts world is undertaking a giant metamorphosis during the pandemic, and we are very pleased to support initiatives that prepare artists for the multi-platform world while growing their connections with audiences and presenters with such interesting work,” stated Joan Tobin, founder of the Ballytobin Foundation.
IMAGINE attracted an eclectic range of projects and applicants. We chatted briefly to two of them to get a better sense of things.
Sadaf Amini is an Iranian-Canadian musician, specializing in the santur, an instrument typically played in traditional Iranian music. She will be participating in two projects as part of the IMAGINE project; the one dearest to her heart is an elegy to Flight 752 that was shot down by the Iranian government in January 2020, killing everyone on board.
“I was deeply saddened by the news,” said Amini. “And I wanted to do something to commemorate the innocent people who were lost.” The work, being written by renowned composer John Burge for santur and choir, although still in the writing process, is planned to be a seven-movement piece using poetry by the great Iranian poet, Rumi. It will also incorporate the flight number 752 into the piece using motifs of seven, five and two notes.
“John Burge and I had already started to collaborate on this project but when COVID hit, everything got put on hold,” explained Amini. “So it means a lot to me to be able to now continue with this work and bring it to the world as a memorial to the victims.”
In addition to her musical skills, Amini’s master’s degree in Musical Technology from U of T, and current job as a technician at The Isabel, make her uniquely qualified to speak to the experience of performing in the hall there. “It’s a great building--very well-engineered and well-maintained,” said Amini. “The acoustics are so good in the hall that groups can perform acoustically without any amplification.”
Julia Wedman, another of the successful applicants, is a violinist specializing in the Baroque period, who performs with Tafelmusik and other ensembles, as well as as a soloist. The piece she’ll be working on with Brian Solomon, an Indigenous choreographer/dancer and Mariana Medellin, a Mestizo dancer, is one part of a three-year work that originated at the Gallery Players in Niagara, called Songs of Life - Bach on Turtle’s Back.
“Although we’ve been working on it for a couple of years, this grant is an opportunity to go in deep on a small part of this larger project that we’ve been exploring,” said Wedman. The work is a contemporary take on Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas that explores themes of creation and transformation.“Both Brian and I are very open musically and artistically and put a high priority on expressing something meaningful in our art,” said Wedman. “These pieces are about a journey from darkness to light – a hero’s journey to find a new way forward – and it really relates to what we’re all going through at this time.”
She, Solomon and Medellin have been given rehearsal time plus a full day in the theatre with access to the technical team and four video cameras.
“I’ve done some small filming projects, but I’ve never filmed with a dancer before,” explained Wedman. “Plus, I’ve never been in the position to have input on how the cameras are set up and how things will be shot, so that’s new and exciting.”
Although making the final video and audio recordings available for public consumption wasn’t a criterion for being accepted for the IMAGINE initiative, The Isabel is planning to make many of the works available online or during their summer festival in 2021. We look forward to seeing the fruits of these labours and new directions and collaborations they’ve enabled.
As Tricia Baldwin says, “The hardest times are often when the best work happens.”
Cathy Riches is a self-described Toronto-based recovering singer and ink slinger.
