The Banff Centre: Communications

The Globe and Mail: “Lillian Alling, the first full-length piece Vancouver Opera has ever commissioned for its main stage, will have its world premiere next fall, but about 50 VO donors, staff and colleagues got a preview earlier this month…. The opera, written by Estacio and Murrell, is based on the real-life story of Lillian Alling, a Russian immigrant who arrived in New York in the 1920s and proceeded to walk across the continent to British Columbia.”

CBC News: “John Estacio of Edmonton, Peter Paul Koprowski of Ottawa, and Ana Sokolovic of Montreal are the winners of the National Arts Centre Awards, which encompass musical commissions and residencies valued at $75,000 each.”

Estacio has been a faculty member at The Banff Centre and was composer of The Banff Centre opera commissions Filumena and Frobisher.

Marketwire: The $25,000 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Awards for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist is awarded to Rebecca Belmore, while the winner of the $15,000 award for curatorial excellence in contemporary art is Anthony Kiendl, Director/Curator, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.

Belmore was a resident artist at The Banff Centre in the 1990s. (Belmore has also been selected by CBC as one of the 10 most significant visual artists of the 2000s [photo gallery number 3].)

Kiendl was the Director of Visual Arts, Walter Phillips Gallery, and the Banff International Curatorial Institute at The Banff Centre from 2002 until 2006.

CBC: “Composer, conductor and celebrated flutist Robert Aitken has won the Canada Council’s $50,000 Walter Carsen Prize…. A former director of the Banff Centre’s winter program in Music, Aitken has also established and led a number of musical series….”

CBC Arts: “Calgary playwright and director John Murrell has written an English-language libretto for Leos Janacek’s opera The Story of Sharp Ears the Fox (or The Cunning Little Vixen). The family opera will premiere in English for the first time at the Banff Centre for the Arts in August… The work has a new orchestration by Briton Jonathan Dove and will be performed by singers from the Banff Opera as Theatre program.”

CBC: Literary Arts faculty member Fred Stenson’s novel The Great Karoo is among nominees for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

Medicine Hat News: “I worked at the Banff Centre for the Arts for 25 years, and I went there because of the job. It’s one of the most exciting possibilities for an artist to have that kind of job, where you’re connecting with international artists at a high level.”

Montreal Mirror: “During a residency at Banff, Carpenter’s zining intersected with the Web when she took a circular text originally intended for a chapbook and turned it into her first Web-based art project…. Recently, Carpenter has been kept hopping with the Montreal and Toronto launches of her novel… and working with the Banff Centre on bringing their literary program into the 21st century. ‘Banff has given me a lot,’ says Carpenter. ‘I did my first Web-based work there in 1995, and now they’ve invited me back to be part of expanding their program.’”

Free Times [Columbia, South Carolina]: “The roots of Bush’s career can be traced directly to the time he spent after Peabody at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada, “which was kind of a post-graduate artist colony,” Bush recalls. “That was a super-pivotal time for me,” he says. “Great faculty would come in and play chamber music with the students. They also brought in a lot of composers, and we would do their music.”

All About Jazz: “I often think that without the Banff International Jazz Workshop, I would never have gotten any tour off the ground. If you don’t know about this workshop, check it out.”