continued from page 11 Most immediately, I’ve been working with the rest of the FAWN Chamber Creative team to get ready for a week-long workshop for Pandora in <strong>June</strong>. This is an opera-ballet triple bill with librettos by David James Brock and music by David Storen, Joseph Glaser and Kit Soden (and is the direct result of a workshop FAWN hosted last year). It’s a really exciting project for me because I have a strong interest in alternative methods of creating opera and we’re doing exactly that. What are you most looking forward to as an audience member between now and September 7? I’m so often taken away in the summer and always regret not getting to see what’s on at Luminato. I’m fortunately only away for two weeks this year to direct the scenes for Cowtown Summer Opera Academy, so I’m looking forward to taking in as much as I can during the festival. How about as a music maker/arts worker? I view them as the same. Even when I go to an electronic music show, I’m there as both an audience member and an artist ready to learn. What are you already preparing for musically beyond the summer? I’m actually getting married early September, so I expect that will be taking up a lot of my summertime. Alongside that, I will be planning for Notes of Hope, creating concepts for Pandora with my creative team and working on my plans for the production of Massenet’s Cendrillon that I am directing at Wilfrid Laurier University in the winter of 2019. It’s looking to be a really exciting summer. Amanda Smith is a Toronto-based stage director and founding artistic director of FAWN Chamber Creative. With FAWN, she commissions, produces and directs new Canadian operas and interdisciplinary works that correlate new classical music with other contemporary art forms. ELISHA DENBURG, composer/arts administrator What are we interrupting? Right now I’m taking a coffee break from my duties as community relations manager at the Ashkenaz Foundation. This year we are launching the 12th biennial edition of the Ashkenaz Festival, a huge gathering of Jewish-global music, arts and culture! It takes place this year from <strong>August</strong> 28 to September 3 in Toronto. My job involves a lot of different tasks, from coordinating volunteers, to booking vendors, ads, and writing grants for the foundation. If you’ve never been, do check it out! Visit ashkenaz.ca to find out more (and hey, maybe you wanna volunteer?). What are you most looking forward to as an audience member between now and September 7? I’m really looking forward to attending what I can of the Open Ears Festival in Waterloo Region – in particular, Katerina Gimon’s outdoor installation and Jason Doell’s CD release party [on <strong>June</strong> 2]. As well, the Toronto Creative Music Lab always produces some very interesting collaborations and fosters interaction between some very talented new artists. I’m always excited to hear what they come up with. How about as a music maker/arts worker? Definitely the Ashkenaz Festival! This will be the culmination of months of hard work and I am so excited to see it come to fruition, which for me will be the first time. Others who have been working at the festival for a long time expect this to be the biggest and best Ashkenaz yet! Most of the events are free, so if you’re around before and on Labour Day weekend, come join us! What are you already preparing for musically beyond the summer? In the new year, I’m looking forward to starting a piece commissioned by the Orchid Ensemble in Vancouver, in celebration of the 70th birthday of my uncle Moshe Denburg, who is likewise a composer steeped in the traditions of Jewish music. So, I plan to keep my ears open at the Ashkenaz Festival to help fuel the inspiration and ideas for this upcoming work. Elisha Denburg’s music has been played across Canada and the US. His catalogue focuses on vocal/chamber works, and is often informed by Jewish liturgical and folk traditions. He currently works at the Ashkenaz Foundation. DONNA BENNETT, director of marketing, Westben What are we interrupting? Well, I was just having a meeting with the head of our volunteers, sorting out what volunteers are going to be used for our season. We have a new series on Saturdays this year called Dare to Pair, where, before concerts, patrons can come and have wine tastings, with lunch by a local chef and conversations with musicians. We’re doing that for six Saturdays – so, I was going to the volunteers and talking about how many tables we need, and tablecloths, and wine glasses – all of that stuff. What are you most looking forward to as an audience member between now and September 7? I’ll be pretty busy with Westben – we have 30 concerts over two months this summer. But I’m looking forward to our production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We have a 100-member cast, and it features two of the choirs that I run throughout the year. So I’m looking forward to seeing them get up onstage. How about as a music maker/arts worker? I’m a soprano and I’ll be singing on <strong>July</strong> 21 at Westben in a Scottish program, with tenor Colin Ainsworth and my husband Brian Finley, Westben’s artistic director, on piano. I’m really looking forward to preparing for, and performing in, that concert. What are you already preparing for musically beyond the summer? Now that we’re a year-round centre, we have concerts coming up in September as well. [That transition] has been really exciting: just calling ourselves a “centre for connections and creativity through music” opens the door to so many possibilities. We’ve added more programming like house concerts, we’ve started some residency programs – such as a performer-composer residency this <strong>July</strong> that our son Ben Finley is organizing. We’re coming up to our 20th anniversary in 2019, and it seemed that we needed to develop; we couldn’t just stay the same. We’d already naturally been doing more events year-round, and we realized that what Westben does is bring people together through music. So we thought that becoming [year-round officially] this year would open up possibilities to develop that. We want to get Westben more out in the community – all year, both digitally and physically. MELANIE ELLIOTT Soprano Donna Bennett has performed in operas, musical theatre and recitals across Canada, the USA and Europe. Her favourite stage is at the Westben, near Campbellford, Ontario, the home of Westben Concerts at The Barn, which she and her husband Brian Finley co-founded in 1999. Donna directs five choirs, teaches privately and is the director of marketing at Westben. 42 | <strong>June</strong> | <strong>July</strong> | <strong>August</strong> <strong>2018</strong> thewholenote.com
<strong>2018</strong> GREEN PAGES 14th Annual Summer Music Guide
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