The Banff Centre: Communications

The Globe and Mail (Page R1) — June 29, 2004.  

Anishnabe sculptor and performance artist Rebecca Belmore is the first native woman artist chosen to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale, “the world’s most prestigious art venue.” Her exhibition, for the June 2005 biennale, is curated by Scott Watson and Jann LM Bailey of the Kamloops Art Gallery.

At 44, Belmore is best known for Speaking to Their Mother, a 1991 outdoor performance with a two-metre-wide megaphone…. Beautiful in itself, the megaphone is also a mouthpiece that can be installed anywhere, from a windswept meadow in Banff, where Belmore created the work, to Parliament Hill, where it was used by the Assembly of First Nations to protest its exclusion from the 1996 first ministers conference.

Canada.com / Vancouver — June 28, 2004.  
Saxophonist Remi Bolduc and pianist Kenny Werner perform with The Marois Vocal Project at Capilano College Friday, July 2, as part of this year’s TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival.

Werner has played with many great musicians over the past two decades (Joe Lovano, Joe Henderson, Jack DeJohnette) and is a mentor to many others as a teacher. He first met Bolduc while teaching courses at the Banff School of Fine Arts’ summer jazz program. Bolduc enrolled as a student one year and then came by the next as a teacher working under the pianist’s direction. “I enjoyed teaching very much,” says Werner. “It was loose enough to remain a creative environment without getting bogged down in academia. Dave Holland’s original vision of it is still alive. He once said, ’We’re not really teachers, they’re not really students — we’ve got to learn from each other and share whatever we have.’ That was still happening the four years that I was involved with the program. The idea was just to mix and lead by example.”

National Post —
June 17, 2004.   Review of the Walter Phillips Gallery exhibition Giddy-Up!:

Hunter’s combination of playful storytelling and thorough research into the purported hub of cowboy culture — complete with Indian Day festivals, fancy-dress cowgirls, teepees, big-brimmed hats and spurs — makes for a nostalgic if somewhat fictitious adventure.

Toronto Star — June 9, 2004.  
Two years ago, the Canada Dance Festial named five choreographers as Fresh Voices and gave them resources to create new works and spend time together investigating their choreographic practice at a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. The resulting works are being presented this week in Toronto.

The Calgary Sun — June 4, 2004.  
An apparent goof-up at McMaster University has led to a prestigious honorary doctorate being given to the wrong Hugh Fraser at this week’s convocation ceremonies, says the man who claims to be the intended honouree. Hugh Fraser, the former Hamilton Spectator music critic and Hamilton Gallery of Distinction inductee, says he was supposed to get the doctorate of letters.

But somehow it ended up being given to a trombone player named Hugh Fraser from Victoria.