Canada's Cecilia String Quartet, one of nine quartets competing in the 2010 BISQC.

Can’t attend the 2010 Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC) in person? Tune your ears to your nearest radio or internet connection…

Beginning August 30, nine young quartets from six countries will gather in Banff for the 10^th BISQC. And while the best way to experience BISQC is in person at The Banff Centre, you can tune in across Canada, and around the world through live radio broadcasts, and on-demand streaming.

In partnership with The Banff Centre, CBC Radio 2 will deliver complete competition coverage via live concert streaming, interviews, competition highlights, and updates by CBC’s Bill Richardson, host of In Concert, and Julie Nesrallah, host of Tempo. Tempo will carry daily reports along with performance highlights Tuesday, August 31 to Friday, September 3. On Sunday, September 5, In Concert will feature interviews, analysis, and performance highlights from the week. You can also experience the final competition live on Sunday at 2 p.m. MDT at cbc.ca/radio2, and on September 6th, Tempo will present a two-hour wrap-up of the finals.

Get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of all things BISQC through the BISQC blog www.banffcentre.ca/bisqc/2010/ featuring daily updates during the competition week.

The quartets selected to compete in 2010 include the Afiara String Quartet (Canada), Amaryllis Quartet (Germany/Switzerland), Asasello Quartet (Germany), Atrium String Quartet (Russia), Cecilia String Quartet (Canada), Hausmann Quartet (USA), Noga Quartet (France), Peresson Quartet (USA), and the Quatuor Zaide (France).

Created in 1983 to mark the 50th anniversary of The Banff Centre, and presented every three years, BISQC is open to quartets of all nationalities whose members are all under the age of 35. Awards include $100,000 in cash and prizes, including the offer of a Banff Centre residency and CD recording, a set of bows by internationally-renowned Canadian bow maker François Malo, and a recital tour of Europe and North America.

Loves Lies Bleeding in performance. Alberta Ballet dancer Yukichi Hattori at an initial costume fitting. Costume photos: Laura Vanags. Performance photos: Don Lee.

Banff build supports tomorrow’s costume designers

For the past 40 years, outrageous costumes have been Elton John’s stock in trade. His larger-than-life persona, companion to decades of hit songs, has been expressed in countless sets of oversized spectacles, spangled waistcoats, high-collared capes, platform shoes, and bushels of sequins, feathers, crystals, and glitter. His clothes have been as much a means of expression as his music. So what better way to immerse yourself in the creative world of Love Lies Bleeding, Alberta Ballet’s new production based on the music of Elton John, than to build the costumes?  

Based on previous, highly successful collaborations with Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maître, The Banff Centre was invited to build most of the costumes for Love Lies Bleeding. This highly creative undertaking took over the Centre’s costume shop for ten weeks this spring. Beginning with sketches, designs, and fabric ideas by Montreal-based costume designer Martine Bertrand, 23 wardrobe technicians, including eight apprentices, tackled the project, which demanded multiple costume changes throughout the show, many of them designed to be done right on the stage.  

Denise Gingrich, head of costumes for Love Lies Bleeding, was familiar with the Centre’s costume shop – she directed the build for the 2007 opera Frobisher, co-commissioned by the Centre and Calgary Opera. “This is a dream costume show,” Gingrich says about Love Lies Bleeding. “We were able to pull out all the bells and whistles.” Getting from sketch to stage required daily problem-solving – how to create a massive, chandelier-shaped headpiece that a dancer could move in onstage, how to add flashing lights to a costume without blinding other dancers or audience members, how to make a four-foot-wide, leaf-covered skirt light enough to wear.  

“This is a dream costume show. We were able to pull out all the bells and whistles”  

“When I saw the costumes on stage during rehearsal for the first time I thought ‘We are really well-prepared,’” Bertrand says about the technical requirements for the show. All the crystal and glitter worked its magic, and created exactly the stage effects she wanted. “It was exactly the way I had seen it in my head.”  

Gingrich adds that the technical skills, and trial and error involved in the show, gave costumers opportunities to learn and practice rare skills. She points to those leafy skirts – a stylized form of 18th-century garment called a pannier. For the show, each skirt was underpinned with a stiff lightweight cage of netting and boning to stand out wide from the dancer’s body, attached to a bodice and covered with gold-painted leaves.  

Building the panniers was a unique learning opportunity for theatre production work study James Braun, a graduate of the costume certificate program at vancouver’s Capilano College. He lived and worked at The Banff Centre through the show’s costume build. “Making the panniers was the most challenging thing,” he says. “Physically, they’re just really big, and they’re made out of industrial materials.” The skirts provide a good example of the intense creative process behind a show of this scale. Braun’s work was guided by preliminary research and development by more senior wardrobe technicians, under the close eye of senior cutter Mitchell MacKay.  

At another table, master milliner Leslie Norgate created high-standing, leaf-covered headpieces to match the skirts, each one sprayed in gold and green, with leaves attached by cable ties to a lightweight, cage-style structure. Norgate came to Banff to work on Love Lies Bleeding as part of the Andrea Brussa Master Artist Endowment Fund, awarded annually to top artists in specialty theatre crafts. Designing and building all the hats and headpieces for the show, she was also on hand to provide a rare level of mentorship to two millinery work studies.  

Based in Toronto and one of the most sought-after theatrical milliners in North America, Norgate has worked on shows for companies including the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the National Ballet of Canada, and the Metropolitan Opera. Her work on Love Lies Bleeding ranged from tight-fitting, futuristic black skullcaps to stylized palace sentry hats, bristling with black fur. She says that as with every new show, there was plenty to learn, even for a seasoned professional.  

Headpieces played an important role in the Love Lies Bleeding production. Right: Brussa Master Artist Leslie Norgate adjusts a chandelier headpiece for an Alberta Ballet dancer during a Love Lies Bleeding costume fitting.

In the case of this show, she was able to experiment extensively with a material called Lexan, a clear, pliable plastic similar to Plexiglas, but much stronger. Among other accessories created for the ballet, she used Lexan to craft the elaborate chandelier worn in one scene by the Elton John character. Onstage, it will look as if it was created from white wire. “The audience doesn’t see all the research and development that goes into everything,” Norgate notes. “They don’t see the samples, or the adjustments.”  

The creativity comes in taking a costume designer’s original idea, and finding a way to make it work, with all the challenges of stage lighting, movement, costume change, and audience sightlines. Norgate has been particularly gratified by the creative collaboration she and the whole team have had with Bertrand, who flew back and forth across the country for initial consultations, and fittings with Alberta Ballet. “It’s always a collaboration between the designer and the builder, to combine the design side and the technical side,” Norgate says. “It’s common for designs to evolve.”  

Ultimately, the proof is on stage. One of the most anticipated stage productions in Canada this year, Love Lies Bleeding is a virtuoso creative and technical achievement. Beginning with a book full of sketches, these craftspeople have followed the same evolution of creativity, development, and metamorphosis that has imbued every step of this remarkable ballet.

Left: Ken Lawson channels his inner Billy Idol as Hard Core Logo’s Billy Tallent. Right: Michael Scholar, Jr., Ken Lawson, Toby Berner, and Clinton Carew rock it out in Banff. Photos: Laura Vanags.

Punk rock musical road show storms the stage

The language is R rated. The music is in your face. But Michael Scholar Jr. insists that the story he is telling is as much a piece of Canadiana as beavers and lumberjacks.

The story is Hard Core Logo, based loosely on the life and times of the seminal 1970s vancouver punk band, D.O.A. “The term hardcore punk was born in vancouver,” Scholar points out. “The scene there was every bit as important to the invention of punk as London or New York. This is a slice of Canadian history.”

It’s a slice of Canadian history you won’t find in your high school history books. Based on the book by Michael Turner and the film by Bruce McDonald, Scholar’s stage adaptation, Hard Core Logo: LIVE, reflects the raw anarchic D.I.Y. energy of the punk scene.

“It’s a punk rock musical road show,” Scholar says. “It takes the audience on a mythological road trip with the band Hard Core Logo across Western Canada. In writing the script, I wanted to create the sense of an authentic trip, and also mirror the humour and the stresses that develop in that situation, kind of like a dysfunctional family on wheels.”

Scholar, along with director Brad Moss and members of the cast, spent a week at The Banff Centre this spring refining Hard Core Logo: LIVE’s production elements.

Scholar says he has been a fan of the story for some time. “I first saw the film at the Princess Theatre in Edmonton in 1995 or 96, and I was blown away by it. About a year later, I picked up the book secondhand at a sidewalk sale and I immediately fell in love with how Michael Turner tells the story.”

Turner’s book does not follow a traditional narrative. Instead it uses snippets of conversation, poetry, diary entries, black and white photos, lyrics, and performance contracts to recreate the band’s ill-fated reunion tour.

“It immediately struck me it was perfect for the theatre,” says Scholar. “When I picked it up again, a decade later, I was amazed no one had done a play with this material.” During that decade Scholar, and his vancouver-based company, November Theatre, had enjoyed international success with the touring production of Tom Waits’ The Black Rider, including award-winning runs in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, and vancouver.

“I was searching for another production and I realized this was it,” Scholar says.

Live music is central to the production and Scholar made a critical decision early on to ask D.O.A. founder Joey “Shithead” Keithley to create original music for Hard Core Logo: LIVE. “We also decided to play songs in their entirety, not segments like in the film,” Brad Moss points out. “We wanted this production to be true to the source material.”

Auditions for pre-production workshops began in late 2008 and immediately sparked interest from across the country. “It was like we threw down the gauntlet and people from across the country rushed to pick it up,” says Scholar. The play demands multiple skills – beyond acting, it also demands rock and roll chops. “If Joe got excited by someone auditioning, then we knew we had the right guy,” says Scholar.

Up until this spring, Scholar and Moss had concentrated on script and music development. When the chance came to mount a workshop at The Banff Centre through a B.C. Arts Council Performing Arts Production Residency, they jumped at it.

“We’ve been working through the multimedia elements, and the staging,” Moss says. “It’s very helpful to be in a real theatre space.”

“Being here in the mountains also allows the team to really gel,” he adds “Its not just what takes place in the theatre, but conversations afterwards, lots of ideas bubble up outside the eight-hour day. We are able to focus and accomplish a lot of work.”

“The Banff Centre provides the perfect opportunity to develop an innovative theatre piece like Hard Core Logo: LIVE,” says Stan Hamilton, vice chair of the B.C. Arts Council. “This is the third year the council has been working with the Centre, offering B.C.-based artists a unique opportunity to integrate and refine original productions.”

Hard Core Logo: LIVE will premiere this November at Edmonton’s Theatre Network, before moving on to Vancouver’s PuSh Festival in January 2011. Scholar and Moss hope the production will tour.

“We’d like to wave the vancouver punk flag around the world,” Scholar says.

Hard Core Logo: LIVE is a co-production between November Theatre, Theatre Network, and Touchstone Theatre in association with Rumble Productions. Adapted by Michael Scholar, Jr., original music by Joe “Shithead” Keithley of D.O.A, lyrics by Michael Turner. From the book by Michael Turner, the film by Bruce McDonald, and the screenplay by Noel S. Baker.

Composer Gavin Bryars’s new opera Marilyn, featuring Faroese singer Eivor and the Aventa New Music Ensemble, and showcased this June at the Centre, is also supported by a BC Arts Council Performing Arts Production Residency.

Videographers gather tape at the Cave and Basin National Historic Site. Photo: Laura Vanags.

Centre boot camp kicks off Parks Canada videography project

Jeff Bordal is standing in the birthplace of Canada’s national park system, an underground cavern with a steady stream of warm, sulphurous water dripping from its ceiling into an aquamarine pool. When this hidden hot spring was discovered in 1875 by three off-duty railroad workers, it planted the seed for Canada’s commitment to identify, protect, and promote wild places for all Canadians. But for now, Bordal is just trying to centre this one important spot, the heart of Banff’s Cave and Basin National Historic Site, in the viewing screen of a small, handheld video camera. 

Bordal is one of 32 young videographers taking part in a five-day boot camp offered by The Banff Centre in a unique partnership with Parks Canada. After the boot camp, Bordal and his colleagues, chosen from more than 900 applicants, will head out to National Parks, national historic sites, and national marine conservation areas across the country to participate in a new initiative Parks Canada is calling The Greatest Summer Job in Canada. Their mandate: to act as video-reporters and tell the stories of park places, people, and experiences. 

Parks Canada CEO Alan Latourelle championed the concept at the project launch at The Banff Centre in May. “I am extremely proud that Parks Canada imagined this unique way to engage Canadian youth in the realization of our mandate. Their enthusiasm and creativity will help us better connect with young Canadians and open new communication channels to bring Parks Canada closer to the population.” 

“I have so many ideas about what I want to say in the films, and it’s just a matter of learning the skills to do it.” 

“I was ready for an adventure,” says Jeff Bordal, who lives in Port Alberni, B.C., and will be stationed at the Coastal British Columbia field unit, which includes the Gulf Islands and Pacific Rim National Parks Reserves. Like his 32 colleagues, he’ll spend the summer exploring the parks, filming and editing short films, and posting the results online. In November, the best films by the videographers will be available for viewing at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. “It’s a huge learning experience for me,” he adds. 

Designed by the Centre’s Film and Media department to upgrade the videographers’ skills in video, editing, sound, and storytelling, the boot camp was run under the guidance of experienced filmmakers and Adobe experts, like local adventure filmmaker and photographer Pat Morrow, and Ava Karvonen, founder of Reel Girls Media. 

Participants were given quick courses in project management, audio recording, and editing, Adobe editing software, interview skills, camera operation, and finding and telling stories effectively. They were in Banff in part because the project celebrates the 125th anniversary of Banff National Park and the parks system, but also because it’s an investment for Parks Canada in new technologies and new forms of communication, areas of expertise that mesh well with the strengths of The Banff Centre. 

For Chris Paetkau, a student in communications at Red River College in Winnipeg who will be stationed in Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park field unit, the boot camp was a worthwhile refresher. But the most compelling thing about the Greatest Summer Job was the opportunity to get out of the city, and away from technology, as much as a videographer can. “I’m very interested in developing less city-centric points of view,” he says. “Parks provide a respite from civilization, and I want to capture that the best I can.” 

One of the keys to the project will be to convey the experience of the outdoors, and have it resonate on viewers’ computer screens. Many of the students applied for the job with strong backgrounds in videography and editing. Others have skills in filmmaking and new media, but few have extensive experience of the parks, so they have the same stories to discover as first-time visitors. 

Banff National Park interpreter Heather Dempsey has told the videographers that Parks Canada would like viewers to see the parks and reserves through fresh eyes when they watch online. 

That won’t be difficult for Harmony Umwali, travelling to New Brunswick for the first time to join the field unit at the Bay of Fundy. “I’m looking forward to the challenge, and doing something I’ve never done before,” she says. “I have so many ideas about what I want to say in the films, and it’s just a matter of learning the skills to do it.”Originally from the Congo, she’s been studying at the University of Calgary, and has visited Banff National Park a few times. But New Brunswick, and Fundy National Park, will be a completely original experience. “I had to Google that,” she says.

Tom Rolston: opposite, top, 1996 by Don Lee; below, 1981 by Kathleen Watt; above, 1962, photographer unknown.

Remembering Tom Rolston

Tom Rolston passed away on May 29, 2010.  A towering figure in the development and mentorship of musicians from across Canada, Tom Rolston, together with his wife Isobel, shaped the course of Music programs at The Banff Centre for nearly 40 years. Tamara Bernstein remembers the legacy and the man. 

It’s important for those who knew Tom Rolston to remember him in some detail, and not just because that is how human beings honour the departed, and endure the grief of their passing. 

Formal bios of Rolston show a distinguished career: a vancouver-born violinist who made good in Europe, then returned to Canada, brought the Suzuki method of string instruction to this country, then went on to head The Banff Centre’s music programs. 

That’s all true, of course, but the reality behind it is that Tom Rolston was a visionary; a generous, free spirit who opened doors and made the impossible possible for generations of musicians. 

“With Tom it didn’t matter where you were from, what you’d done, or whether you had the perfect musical pedigree, says Canadian violinist Erika Raum. “He’d look at you fresh, without prejudice, and appreciate you for what you are….It made you feel so free; so unself-conscious. He embodied the egalitarian, western spirit.” 

“My Dad changed people’s lives,” says his daughter Shauna Rolston, the internationally renowned cellist. “He provided structures in which they could grow, and just get on with it, whether that meant becoming a star or becoming the musical mover and shaker in a small community. Both of those were equally important to him: there was no hierarchy of success to him.” 

Rolston’s philosophy as an administrator was simple: “‘No’ is never an acceptable answer in the arts,” he once told his daughter. “Sometimes you have to say ‘maybe,’ but never ‘no,’ because you never know what you’d be shutting down.” 

In 1965, when Rolston started teaching at what is now known as The Banff Centre, there were only summer school classes in the arts. Six years later, David Leighton, the visionary president of the Centre at the time, named Rolston head of the music department. What happened next turned out to be one of the great moments in Canadian music history; a planetary lineup of people and events. 

The year was 1971. The price of oil was high; Peter Lougheed had just swept to power in Alberta and was committed to returning the wealth generated by Alberta’s natural resources to Albertans. Jeanne Lougheed, the premier’s wife, was a staunch supporter of the arts and a former student of The Banff Centre. Leighton had a vision for a world class, year- round artist colony at The Banff Centre, and Alberta was prepared to back it. 

During an off-season walk on the Banff Springs golf course, Leighton and Rolston agreed that the music program should blaze the trail for year-round arts programs at the Centre. At the time, there were calls in the corridors of power in eastern Canada for a national music school, and The Banff Centre was identified as the best site. But Rolston had no interest in conventional university or conservatory-style training. 

“Tom believed that the individual is responsible for his or her learning [after completing basic training],” says Jorie Adams, the senior administrator for the Centre’s music programs throughout the Rolston era. “That’s the opposite of the university model, which is top down: the professor is king, and teaches the students what he thinks they need to know.” 

The core of the new music residency programs was, “‘You come to us with a goal, and tell us what you want to achieve in the next five years, and we will figure out how we can help you.” That educational philosophy became the Banff Centre’s calling card,” Adams says. 

By the time the fall-winter program got off the ground in 1979, Tom and his wife, pianist Isobel Moore Rolston, could draw on the astounding faculty they had gathered to The Banff Centre’s summer music programs. “Tom was a talent scout not just for emerging artists but also for the best teachers of the time,” says violinist Barry Shiffman, The Banff Centre’s current head of Music. The Rolstons recruited legends like pianists Gyorgy Sebok and Menachem Pressler; violist William Primrose, cellists Janos Starker, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and Aldo Parisot; violinist Lorand Fenyves, conductor Klaus Tennstedt, and the Hungarian String Quartet. 

“I would not be doing anything I’m doing now if I hadn’t gone to Banff in those years,” says Geoff Nuttall, the founding first violinist of the Grammy-nominated St. Lawrence String Quartet, artist in residence at Stanford University, and director of chamber music at the Spoleto USA Festival. “I met Fenyves there, and [violinist Zoltan] Szekely — that whole group of musicians that Tom and Isobel decided were important. We didn’t really appreciate Banff until we went to other famous summer schools and said, ‘Hey, there’s nobody good here; everybody’s boring.’ “ 

The Rolstons’ faculty were musician’s musicians — not glitzy superstars. “Tom had a disdain for the music business,” Adams says. “He didn’t want to grease the machine of the whole New York music establishment.” That, and the Rolstons’ trusting, quasi- parental support for young musicians, set the tone for Banff as a place where artists could flourish, without the toxic competitiveness that often plagues classical music institutions. 

Shiffman first attended Banff as a child in the then Gifted Youth program. “We knew Tom was the boss, but he had those smiley eyes. He’d look at you and there was a real light — you felt safe; there was this encouraging, positive spirit around him.” 

No portrait of Rolston would be complete without mention of his red vespa. In the 1950s, it carried the newly-wed Tom and Isobel through Britain and France; years later, Rolston and his red, vintage helmet became an iconic part of the Banff landscape. “Nobody had a vespa in those days,” says Shiffman. “You’d hear that putt putt putting up the hill and you’d know Tom was coming, and you felt good.” 

Rolston delighted in taking such unlikely parties as Menachem Pressler, the Old World pianist, for a spin, and remained unmoved by suggestions that the tires might be due for a top-up. “He loved to tell people that those tires contained their original Italian air,” Adams says. 

All of us who mourn Tom Rolston’s passing may find comfort in the words he spoke to his family every night for as long as Shauna can remember. “If I die tonight,” he’d say, “I just want you to know that I’m the happiest man in the world.” 

Earlier in 2010, Tom and Isobel Rolston partnered with the Székely family to create the Székely/ Rolston Young Musicians program. This new initiative will inspire the next generation of musicians, by creating learning and mentoring opportunities for young chamber ensembles as part of the Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC). Contributions in Tom’s memory can be made at banffcentre.ca/support

Mary Hofstetter President & CEO

At the intersection of art and ideas

The first thing you notice when you walk into the Kinnear Centre for Creativity & Innovation is the light. Natural light spills through every public space, infusing this new building with a sense of openness and possibility.

The second thing you notice isn’t in the Kinnear Centre at all. Sweeping mountain vistas and limitless skies fill the floor-to-ceiling windows, inviting exploration and discovery. If ever a building could be said to inspire thinking outside the box, the Kinnear Centre is it.

This splendid building was designed with great respect for its magnificent location in Banff National Park by renowned Canadian architect Jack Diamond, of the award-winning firm Diamond and Schmitt Architects Inc.

The opening of the Kinnear Centre for Creativity & Innovation this July represents the dawn of a new era at The Banff Centre. Situated at the heart of our campus, the Kinnear Centre will function as an interdisciplinary crossroads – a meeting place where innovative arts and ideas, and creative leadership will flourish.

The Kinnear Centre will support intensive learning opportunities for the thousands of artists and leaders who attend Centre programs and conferences every year. Its flexible learning spaces, state-of-the-art audiovisual systems, and generous informal meeting areas will draw participants together, and spark new dialogue and collaboration.

The emergence of the Paul D. Fleck Library & Archives from the basement of Lloyd Hall to its new central location in the Kinnear Centre means the resources of this remarkable collection are more accessible to all of the Centre’s participants, and independent researchers. And throughout the Kinnear Centre you will find art from The Banff Centre Permanent Collection, showcasing the creative legacy of visual Arts’ alumni.

The ground-floor Maclab Bistro offers a warm welcome, a space where old acquaintances can be renewed and new friendships established over a shared meal, a cappuccino, or a glass of wine.

But the heartbeat of the Kinnear Centre is the programming that will take place inside these interdisciplinary spaces. Those creative and professional development opportunities will be supported by the $28 million raised through the Campaign for The Banff Centre to enhance programming and to provide scholarship assistance to emerging and established artists and leaders.

Throughout the construction of the Kinnear Centre, and associated Revitalization projects, respect for the environment has been key. These projects all incorporate highly energy-efficient heating and cooling systems, LED lighting, and innovative water conservation measures. Over 75 per cent of the construction waste generated has been recycled, and the Kinnear Centre has been designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver Green Building Rating System® standards.

Next summer the Centre will unveil the Shaw Communications Inc. Outdoor Amphitheatre, a magnificent new outdoor performance facility capable of seating over 1,600. The views of the amphitheatre from the Husky Great Hall and from the Kinnear Centre patios and balconies will be truly astounding.

None of this would be possible without the support of the Governments of Alberta and Canada, and the many generous donors who have invested in the future of The Banff Centre. To each of them we offer our profound gratitude.

When next your pathway takes you to Banff – and we hope that will happen this summer during our Summer Arts festival -  we would be delighted to offer you a personal tour of this amazing new facility.

Brian Jungen, "Crux," installation at the Sydney Biennale, 2008

Brian Jungen will return to The Banff Centre this year, revisiting an institution and a landscape that has regenerated his practice since 1998.

Jungen, of Dunne-za First Nations and Swiss Canadian ancestry, is from Fort St. John in northeast British Columbia, and for the past 20 years has lived and worked in Vancouver. He has exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2007), Tate Modern, London (2006), Vancouver Art Gallery (2006), and New Museum, New York (2005), and in group exhibitions including the Sydney Biennale (2008) and Kwangju Biennale, Korea (2004). His exhibition Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort is currently at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.

Transformation is key to understanding Jungen’s work. He first came to prominence with Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005), which refashioned Nike footwear into masks that evoke Northwest Coast iconography. Later works have included whale skeletons made from plastic chairs, totem poles shaped from golf bags, and a giant animal mobile constructed from hard-plastic luggage.

Jungen will be in residence at the Centre’s Leighton Artists’ Colony early in 2010 to create an outdoor sculpture for the Kinnear Centre for Creativity & Innovation.

He spoke with the Centre’s director of Visual Arts, Kitty Scott.

Kitty Scott: When did you first come to The Banff Centre and what did you do here?

Brian Jungen: I first came to The Banff Centre in August 1998. I bought myself a residency of the “self-directed” brand offered then, as I had recently sold some work for the first time. I also received some money from my band from a land claim settlement, so I had the means to go and dedicate time in the studio. I wanted to try making objects as I had never made any before. I also wrote my first mid-career Canada Council grant at The Banff Centre during that summer. I was there for six weeks and made the first two Nike masks from the Prototype series.

KS: I have been thinking more deeply about what it means to retreat from the cities. Like most successful artists your work is shown in major museums and galleries in urban environments. What does it mean for an artist to make or think about work in a somewhat remote place such as The Banff Centre?

BJ: I have always had one foot in the city, and the other out in the bush somewhere. I haven’t met any contemporary artists who like paddling, camping, skiing, or hunting so I have other friends and family who I enjoy these activities with. I am at a place in my life now where I can’t see the sense in living in a city any longer, as most of my time is spent trying to get out of Vancouver. I am hoping to relocate in the next year to a rural environment. I don’t think young artists would do such a move as contemporary art is based in a handful of major international cities. The Banff Centre is the one place where artists can get out of the city yet still have a network and community to work within.

KS: Where do you usually work? What is a typical workday like?

BJ: In the studio I will read and look at images and articles online or in the books I order. Sometimes I draw images of buildings I want to build. When I am working onsite in a museum then I will be cutting up and rebuilding items like couches or garbage cans. I don’t think I have “workdays,” and if I do then I must be doing something wrong.

KS: You just worked with curator Paul Chaat Smith for your survey exhibition — Brian Jungen — at the National Museum of the American Indian. What were the highlights of this experience?

BJ: The highlight of working with Paul at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was the chance to show my work in a non-fine art context. More specifically it was interesting to show my work in a museum for and about the Indigenous experience.

KS: Can you compare the museum experience to that of showing in a large periodic show such as the Sydney Biennale?

BJ: After the NMAI show, I am retiring from museum exhibitions for 10 years. I am not fond of biennials so I imagine I will choose such invitations carefully as I am in no hurry to be part of the biennale pageantry. I want to be on the bottom of things for awhile.

Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort continues until August 2010 at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Thanks to a generous donation by Doug and Linda Black, The Banff Centre has commissioned an outdoor sculpture by Brian Jungen for the Kinnear Centre for Creativity & Innovation. Doug Black is a Banff Centre Governor Emeritus and served as co-chair of the Campaign for The Banff Centre. Linda Black also served on the Campaign Cabinet and is a past chair of the Banff Midsummer Ball.

From a Banff studio, musicians perform with colleagues around the world.

Chris Chafe spent the past year chasing milliseconds.

A composer, musician, and scientist, Chafe has devoted much of his professional life to exploring musical performance over networks. Recent advances in audio and Internet technology have enabled the delivery of live high-quality sound to far-flung locations, but the time delay inherent in network transmission remains a significant stumbling block.

“In a telephone conversation, a 150-millisecond delay is the norm,” says Chafe. “In fact, a telephone conversation can tolerate up to a half-second delay. But that doesn’t work for music. Music is about simultaneity. Research shows that a 20- to 25- millisecond delay is the upper limit for ensemble playing. Anything more disrupts the subtle shadings of rhythm and emphasis that generate musical expression.”

Chafe spent the past year as a Banff Centre iCORE Visiting Professor. On sabbatical from his role as director of the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Chafe worked with the Centre’s Audio department to research new technologies that will enable musicians in distant locations to rehearse and perform together seamlessly.

The benefits are many, Chafe explains. “It brings musicians together, regardless of where they live. So it creates new possibilities for collaboration across distance and international borders. Potentially I could be a drummer sitting in my bedroom in Berkeley jamming with a bass player in Japan.”

And, he adds, it’s green. “Less travel equals less carbon footprint.” Chafe notes that there is already a five-member band in the Bay area rehearsing over the Net, coming together only at live gigs.

Much of Chafe’s work focuses on eliminating, or finding ways to compensate for, the delay caused by network transmission. “We’ve gotten to the point where we are playing with very small increments of time, but the effects remain real.” Adding to the conundrum, Chafe notes, is the fact that the delay increases with the network distance.

“In a face-to-face situation,” he explains, “sound travels at one foot per millisecond. Musicians are used to compensating for that. That’s why string quartets sit so close together — to minimize the delay.”

“But, when we link Banff with Ireland we get a 100-millisecond network delay – the equivalent to seating the players 100 feet apart — and it becomes very difficult to play synchronously.”

While previous research focused on using high-quality telecommunications lines to link musicians, Chafe’s current work revolves around Internet transmission. “What’s great about the web is that it is open source and open access,” says Chafe. “The potential exists to find a solution everyone would have access to.”

Over the course of his iCORE year, Chafe worked in Banff to develop improved software for audio over Internet transmission, publish his findings, and research the role video cues play in networked performance.

“In real life visual cues arrive before audio cues. Light travels faster than sound. You see the conductor move before you hear the downbeat. The opposite is true in network situations. Video transmission takes longer than audio transmission.”

The Banff Centre is the ideal location for such research says Chafe. “You have world-class musicians, an audio engineering program unique in North America, and access to an advanced high-capacity network.”

Theresa Leonard, the Centre’s director of Audio, says Chafe’s research opens many possibilities. “It has the potential to eliminate the barriers caused by distance, to unite teachers and students, and to uncover talent that might be missed.”

During the 2009 Banff Centre jazz program, Chafe organized three Telejazz networked performances. “In the first case, involving musicians in Banff and Calgary, the network delay was minimal and it worked fine,” he says. “When we hooked Banff up to players at Humber College in Toronto, the delay – about 30 milliseconds —was significant and the rehearsal was a bit hairy. But for the live performance, the musicians rose to the occasion and overcame it. The last Telejazz performance, linking performers in San Diego, New York, and Ireland, was a bit slushy due to the longer delay, so we adapted the music to pieces less dependent on timing.”

In November, Chafe’s creative chops and his audio research came together for a five-location networked performance called ResoNations: An International Telematic Music Concert for Peace. Linking musicians in Banff, New York, San Diego, Belfast, and Seoul, the performance featured Chafe’s Rock, Paper, Scissors, a work composed specifically for networked performers.

“Five years ago I wouldn’t have imagined we would have this capability,” says Chafe. “I’ve been surprised by the speed of progress. And best of all, it’s free — or at least very cheap. All you need is a computer, access to the Internet, and the will to perform.”

“We’re inventing a new sound space for interaction — a world-wide concert hall.”

iCORE – the Alberta Informatics Circle of Research Excellence was established in October 1999 by the Government of Alberta to foster researchers in the field of informatics.

Editor Steven Ross Smith describes the new online magazine boulderpavement as a “multi-media site where ideas cluster.” Launched in January, and scheduled to be published bi-annually, Ross promises boulderpavement will be “rich in ability to stimulate your mind, whether your leanings are to music, to art, to literature, to history, to ideas, to nature, or to that ellusive concept we call culture.”  The first issue features art and ideas from Peter von Tiesenhausen, John Luther Adams, Jennifer Still, and more.