The Banff Centre: Communications

London Free Press: “Ottawa’s National Arts Centre is helping ensure the David Leighton show goes on. To honour the Kilworth business professor and arts supporter’s term as chair of its board of trustees, the NAC has announced two new funds supporting emerging Canadian artists and arts professionals…. Leighton served 13 years as president of the Banff Centre in Alberta, during which the Centre was transformed from a six-week summer school to a year-round arts and management centre of international stature.”

CBC: “Canadian Angela Park is among the semifinalists for the Honens International Piano Competition, which selects the world’s most promising young pianists.” Park is an alumna of the Music & Sound program.

CBC Arts : “A 12-year-old Nelson boy has become the youngest filmmaker to become a finalist at the Banff Mountain Film Festival.”

CBC: “The Stradivarius violin owned by a musician who lived and worked in Canada for 40 years sold over the weekend for over $1.4 million US at a Boston auction. The violin was the property of the great Hungarian-born musician Lorand Fenyves, who taught at the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He moved to Toronto in 1966 after teaching and working in Israel and Switzerland.”

San Jose Mercury News: “The St. Lawrence String Quartet has been around since 1989. It has a couple of Grammy nominations under its belt, maintains a loyal international audience and is respected by its peers. And Sunday was a big day for the group. It marked the concert debut of its new member, second violinist Scott St. John, who has replaced Barry Shiffman, a cornerstone of the quartet for 17 seasons”

Bloomberg.com:: “While the adversarial relationship between Dave Douglas and Wynton Marsalis, two of the leading jazz trumpeters, bandleaders, educators and producers in New York — one white, one black — may have been blown out of proportion, it is nothing new.”

Globe and Mail: “Tomorrow, the Stradivarius violin owned by the revered late musician/teacher Lorand Fenyves goes on the block in Boston. Is it too much to hope that a Canadian might buy it?”

Globe and Mail: Article critical of the COC for lack of Canadian content.

Calgary Opera, a smaller company with a budget to match, did a big new work ( Filumena, by John Estacio and John Murrell) three years ago, and has another ( Frobisher) by the same authors coming up in January. The company has forged an alliance with the Banff Centre, which provides support for the same kind of gestational work that the COC’s composer-in-residence program was set up to do.

Edmonton Journal: “Hiking, skiing and climbing aren’t the only reliable way to attract tourists… Unlike its southern cousin, which benefits from the fabulously well-funded Banff Centre for the Arts, Jasper is a scruffy, burgeoning place for the arts.”