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FESTIVAL ELORA
NEW DIRECTIONS
Crystal Chan
What sets Elora Festival (July 10 -
August 2) apart is its dedication to
choral music. The Juno-award nominated
and internationally popular Elora Festival
Singers perform year round and two-thirds of the
summer programming centers on the 29-year old
choir. Other festival highlights you’ll catch this
30th anniversary year include world-renowned
soprano Dawn Upshaw, Canadian jazzman Oliver
Jones, and a dramatic festival-opening performance
of Berlioz’s Requiem, which General
Manager Jurgen Petrenk jokes “uses every brass
player in Ontario!” The most spectacular concert
of all, however, has to be the ‘Quarry’ concert:
Natalie MacMaster, Paul and Nick Halley, gospel
legend Theresa Thomason, Serena Ryder, and the
Elora Festival Singers will be performing on a
floating raft on a lake in an old limestone quarry.
Serena Ryder isn’t your typical classical music
headliner; Petrenko is eager to ensure the Festival
crosses musical boundaries in its search for the
best artist. Six years ago, the Festival started
incorporating jazz, and this year the program has
everything from Billie Holiday standards to
klezmer. So far, according to Petrenko, the new
‘blend’-based programming has received a positive
response.
“We’re moving into the pop world with
[Serena Ryder],” said Petrenko. “We’re hoping to
enlarge our audience range. We’re a Classical
music festival at the core, but certainly moving
beyond that. I think there is a lot of crossover
interest from our audience, who do not only
enjoy one style of music. There’s always the concern
that we don’t want to lose our identity but I
don’t think that’s been happening. The top criterion
is quality. It doesn’t matter so much what it
is, as long as it’s excellent.”
An organization based on one annual event
makes for tricky business. Although it’s mitigated
by year-round fundraising events and a winter
concert series, the bulk of Elora’s revenue is
received during the summer. Elora Festival gets
the largest chunk of its funding, around 50%,
from ticket sales, 30% from the Canada
Council and 20% from fundraising. In a time of
recession, corporate funding has taken a hard
hit. In response, Elora’s revitalized a drive to
attract new corporate sponsors, which
Petrenko is optimistic will also pay off in the
long run. For now, government funding and
private individual donations are holding
steady and will keep them afloat. Elora also
has new plans to build up a cash reserve for
the winter months, and for the first time, Elora is
discontinuing the lowly-attended January and
February winter concerts. Instead, Elora will dedicate
the time to recording the Elora Festival
singers.
This year Elora also inaugurates a Festival
Academy which will allow half a dozen aspiring
singers and pianists to work with two vocal
teachers and one piano teacher from Wilfred
Laurier University during an intensive week of
coaching, master classes, meeting artists, and
attending concerts. The Young Performers
Competition and the Festival Kids Camp will continue.
www.elorafestival.com
FESTIVAL ORFORD
DAVIS JOACHIM
Wah Keung Chan
The 58-year-old Orford Festival has had its
ups and downs. It was in Fall 2007, one the
difficult periods, that classical guitarist
Davis Joachim stepped in as general director.“Every
festival and arts groups has its rough patches,” said
Joachim, whose path as an arts administrator has
included successful periods with the Orchestre
symphonique de Trois-Rivières and I Musici de
Montréal. In 2007, before Joachim started, the
Quebec government and philanthropists such as
the Desmarais stepped in with financial help to
save Orford. Joachim, however, followed the basic
principles of fundraising. Naturally, knowing key
players helps. “The first step I took was to thank
people for work that had been done before. Then
we started to update our database, simply calling
to make sure people received our brochure and asking
if they had questions, no hard sells. We also
hired a marketing firm to update the festival’s
image,”he explained. Joachim also put a face to the
festival by greeting visitors before concerts and
introducing each program, since, as he told us,
“People respond to knowing the CEO.
Finally, we postponed our donation
appeals from February to the fall, when
people who have just had a great summer
are more likely to give to charity.”
During the 2008 Festival, the first
under Joachim’s watch, subscriptions
increased and donations doubled, and
the festival’s budget grew to $3 million,
along with the number of concerts,
including a new fall season. This year,
Joachim officially takes on the hat of
“interim artistic director,” and his 70-
concert series includes some gems,
including Les Violons du Roy, Isabel
Bayrakdarian and the New Orford
String Quartet. Violinist Jonathan Crow, who filled
in at the last minute last year to replace an injured
Ann Robert, has been called in to create a new edition
of the famed quartet. Although Orford’s production
of Berg’s Wozzeck conducted by Yannick
Nézet-Séguin won awards, Joachim won’t bring
back opera to Orford anytime soon.“It’s too expensive,
and I have only 499 seats to sell.”
For the 7-week season,
residents from the Eastern
Townships normally make
up 50% of the audience,
while the rest are tourists.
Joachim pointed out that
“for someone to drive one
and a half hours to listen to
a concert, it has to be something
special,” and the
Festival’s renowned
Summer Academy is part of
the attraction. Ensuring the
quality of teachers and students
and providing career
guidance, and outreach is
half of Joachim’s preoccupations. The “interim”
tag as artistic director does not bother him. “The
board is apprehensive about officially giving the
job of both general and artistic director to one
person because they would like the former be a
financial conscience to the latter.” When Joachim
finds the new artistic director, he will use the
extra time to take the Festival to the next level.
PHOTO Jacques Robert
40 Juin 2009 June