ARTS CULTURE EVENTS

SPRING / SUMMER 2019

Get in the spirit for a haunted puppet opera

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or call Candice Noakes at 1.888.495.4467 Residence Banff Musicians in Features In every issue SPRING / SUMMER 2019 12 The Art of Conduction 3 President’s Letter The improvisational practice that changed 4 Event Highlights Tyshawn Sorey’s music Some highlights from On the cover this season’s Banff 14 Haunted Home Centre shows Ghost Opera is a world of puppets, greed, and 6 Connect With Us questions of life and death Follow our InStudio stories online 20 Animating our Stories Indigenous storytelling 8 From the Vault in the digital age Get to know the artists behind some of the 24 Leading in a Time works from our of Peril and Possibility permanent collection How social innovation has the ability to move mountains

PHILLIPA is the latest creation from the dark and 26 The Monster Within whimsical minds of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop Alberta Ballet’s new for their upcoming production, Ghost Opera. Known take on the story of , 2017) for choosing ambition over convention, eight of Old Frankenstein Trouts’ finest artists handcrafted 14 human-sized puppets, each painted and varnished to resemble 30 Putting Yourself into 10 Studio Visit aged sculptures. On the cover, Phillipa is a young Your Writing Learn about one of our woman, here we see her in her older form. Electric Literature’s Leighton Artists Studios Executive Director A unique combination of puppeteers, opera singers, on the space where 37 Special Section TO CONJURE FROM VAPOUR FROM CONJURE TO and acrobats will take to the Eric Harvie stage on autobiography and Stay at Banff Centre May 24 to breathe life (and death) into the ghostly fiction collide this summer for a works of art. Watch the characters navigate Giller cultural adventure Help set Prize-winning author André Alexis’ take on a Greek 32 A Classical Music Legacy myth at Banff Centre for the world premiere in the Mountains 42 Open Studios before the show heads to the Calgary Opera. The impact of the Peek into the studios of artists Yolande and Howard Banff Centre artists Freeze Fund for Music on the Banff 48 What’s On International String Plan your spring/summer in motion Quartet Competition, cultural adventures 10 years later Support the 57 Staff Recognition 38 Guidelines Artists’ Fund How artist Carmen 58 Alumni News Papalia decentres the Celebrating Banff Read all about the ocular in his work Centre achievements All donations to the Artists’ Fund creation of Ghost Opera and milestones go directly to Banff Centre arts Centre. Banff by on pages 14-19. 60 Banff Centre Supporters programs and support deserving Learn more and buy tickets at banffcentre.ca artists on their creative journey. 64 Last Word Exploring the creative To make a donation, please visit workspace of Canadian banffcentre.ca/artists-fund indie pop band, Alvvays

or call Candice Noakes at 1.888.495.4467 Residence Banff Musicians in HENDERSON (LEE MCKAY NAHANNI (ABOVE), KEALEY KAITLIN , (COVER) STANG JASON CREDITS: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 1 Banff Centre is untamed creativity.

Advance your practice in a post-graduate level artist residency. Programs offered year-round for emerging to professional artists. , 2018. Photo by Jessica Wittman. Apply today. banffcentre.ca

The Hamlet Complex Hamlet The PRESIDENT’S LETTER

Read more about what Electric Lit’s Executive Director Halimah Marcus has to say on page 30 of this issue. Mountainside Live, Banff Centre’s summer series, brings more exciting shows to the Shaw Amphitheatre. This year you’ll find old favourites like Blue Rodeo and new faces like singer- songwriter John Prine, Juno-winning DEAR Inuk musician Susan Aglukark, and ARTS P.E.I.’s own Alvvays. We caught up with the group’s frontwoman, Molly Rankin, LOVER, on the back page to learn about her favourite spaces to create in. Spring and summer are here and with that a new season of exciting arts Finally, we’re thrilled to host the 13th events and programming comes to triennial Banff International String the mountains. Quartet Competition to close out the summer, a showcase of some of the Banff Centre will be bustling with projects most talented young quartets in the in all stages of creation, making every world. This year, the top prize includes stroll through campus an opportunity a new two-year paid residency at to encounter artists experimenting, Southern Methodist University as well collaborating, and sharing their work. as the continuation of the three-year Alberta Ballet’s Artistic Director Jean career development program. Grand-Maître will occupy the dance This promises to be a summer full of studios as the company works on its exciting cultural adventures. Please latest new creation, Frankenstein. Banff enjoy this issue of InStudio, which Centre will host the company and the looks behind the scenes of all our recent Order of Canada inductee as he artistic projects. takes his ideas from page to stage. We look forward to welcoming you On the cover of this issue we have to Banff Centre for our exciting spring provided you a glimpse of the exciting and summer season! production Ghost Opera, which will have its world premiere in the Eric Harvie Theatre. The piece, a collaboration between Banff Centre, Calgary Opera, and the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, was written by Giller Prize-winner André Alexis, is staged with puppets, and promises to be unlike any opera you’ve ever Janice Price seen. Read all about the myth behind PRESIDENT & CEO the story and how these intricate BANFF CENTRE FOR ARTS puppets were created, on page 14. AND CREATIVITY We also welcome editors from the popular digital publisher Electric Literature, as they teach writers working in autobiography, fiction, and auto-fiction how to develop their unique voices. PHOTO CREDIT: COLIN WAY COLIN CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 3 Ghost Opera May 24 A full-scale puppet opera, bringing together the supernatural and the philosophical, the comic and the fearsome, music and image, the real and the surreal. Visual Arts Open Studios Jens Lindemann July 3 + August 21 July 21 + 24 + 25 Mînowin Tour the visual arts studios Jens Lindemann is the May 24 to meet and discover first classical brass In Mînowin, the Dancers of the work of artists in in player to ever receive the Damelahamid draw from Banff Centre’s Visual Arts Order of Canada and the origin stories and explore residency programs. foremost trumpet soloist ways to translate these in his country’s history. perspectives through a Susan Orlean contemporary lens. in Conversation John Prine July 9 + 17 + 24 August 8 Guidelines Join Rogers Communications This two time Grammy- Carmen Papalia Chair in Literary Journalism winning singer-songwriter is with Heather Kai Smith Susan Orlean in conversation among the English language’s June 15 – August 25 with award winning writers premier phrase-turners with music relevant to any age. The exhibition Guidelines Rebecca Skloot, William is the first collaboration of Finnegan, Carol Shaben, and Michael Harris. Vancouver-based artists Jazz and Creative Music Carmen Papalia and Heather Ensemble Showcases Kai Smith. A series of works Alvvays August 10 + 17 + 23 in sound, animation, and July 13 Vijay Iyer leads world- drawing advocates for an Toronto-based five-piece renowned Banff Centre Event Highlights understanding of accessibility Alvvays combine their faculty and participants as a temporary experience fuzzy, jangly indie pop with through an evening of that requires a relational infectious, sugary melodies. approach to mutual care. jazz and creative music exploration.

banffcentre.ca WHAT’S ON AT BANFF CENTRE

Join us this summer for music, dance, opera, lectures, and peeks inside our artists’ studios. Learn more about our spring and summer events on pages 48–56 and on our website at banffcentre.ca

ONE WEEK OF EXHILARATING CONCERTS AND EVENTS.

The world’s finest young string quartets descend upon the Canadian Rockies. Tickets now on sale. View schedule at bisqc.ca

TOP: Dancers of Damelahamid performing MÎnowin (photo by Derek Dix). CENTER: Canadian indie pop band Alvvays. BOTTOM: Participants from the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music (photo by Jessica Wittman). PHOTO CREDITS: JENS LINDEMANN (JAMIE AND KELLEY PHOTOGRAPHY), JOHN PRINE, PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED OTHERWISE UNLESS ARTIST THE OF COURTESY PHOTOS PRINE, JOHN PHOTOGRAPHY), KELLEY AND (JAMIE LINDEMANN JENS CREDITS: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 5 @BANFFCENTRE Art Online

Rose Guitar Trio, Banff Musicians in Residence Revisor, 2019

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There’s More to See Behind the Scenes

Get involved with Banff Centre online to see even more from InStudio. Every time you see the plus symbol ( ), it means we’ve got more in store for you, with videos and articles available online. You can also explore more on our website and on YouTube. Learn how artists get inspired to create their works in our Spotlight series. Plus, check out our Banff Centre Presents series to get a deeper look at the creation of productions before they Work by Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye head out into the world. banffcentre.ca from THE CAVE, 2018

Work by Jesse Tungilik, Banff Artist in Residence Banff Centre is...

We explore the ways Banff Centre inspires creativity in our latest brand campaign, which features 10 artist and alumni profiles each year, like playwright Marcus Youssef (pictured left). The campaign demonstrates artistic impact in Alberta, Canada, and across the world.

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BANFF CENTRE PRESENTS In this video series, you’ll get the exclusive on the creation of new works at Banff Centre. Keep an eye on our social channels for a behind-the-scenes look at these creations.

OPEN STUDIO is a video series that goes inside the studios and creative spaces of our artists and asks them about their practices. Step inside the studios of our participants to see what their process is all about. Watch a video about Jesse Tungilik’s work at banffcentre.ca/ InStudio

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 7 Spirits and Demons Work from Banff Centre’s Permanent Collection

ED PIEN The Rabbit Demon, 1999 BY ALIYA MAZARI

ED PIEN IS A TAIWAN-BORN CANADIAN ARTIST known for his drawing and printing practice. The Rabbit Demon, a red and black print made at Banff Centre during a visual arts residency entitled Surface, employs a technique that uses wet ink to make markings on a single sheet of paper, which Pien then transfers onto an underlining sheet. This process is repeated until the ink dissipates, evaporates, or is absorbed and is described by Pien as being akin to the way sound waves echo and resonate — the ink operating in a visible and palpable way. That resonant form of creation follows a generative approach; the impetus is not on what Pien plans to draw, rather it is about finding meaning in process and the spontaneous ink markings, and crafting them to a representational form. That’s why titling holds an importance for Pien, as a “way to dispel. It is a way of taking back,” he says, especially since words like “demon” often conjure a negative association. The original Greek daimon from which the English word derives has no such connotation. When looking at this hybridized drawing, one is immediately taken aback at an unexpected body where areas are morphed and mutilated. “There is a tension between what we think and what we expect; [this] is part of the reason that I like making these images,” says Pien. The Walter Phillips Gallery permanent collection contains five more paper prints of hybridized creatures by Pien, each influenced by myth­ ologies from different cultures. The Rabbit Demon is part of a continuum inspired, in THERE IS A TENSION particular, by a quote from the classic Chinese text Shan Hai Jing or The Classic of Mountains BETWEEN WHAT WE THINK and Sea: “a thing is not strange in itself; it AND WHAT WE EXPECT. depends on me to make it strange.” The figures speak to this idea — the rabbit demon is “strange” because we think it is, not because it actually is. In this way, Pien challenges us to rethink how we arrive at such conclusions — why we choose

to demonize — in the first place. (OPPOSITE) WITTMAN JESSICA AND ARTIST, THE OF COURTESY CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca FROM THE VAULT

TASTING NOTES LIKE ‘THE MEMORY OF A BEE STING ON YOUR LIPS,’ CONJURES AN AIR OF SEDUCTION FOR THE READER.

LEE HENDERSON To Conjure from Vapour, 2017

BY ALLISON COMRIE

LEE HENDERSON, A TORONTO-BASED ARTIST, is found on the distillery’s site. These signs comfortable finding humour within the subject have been created by generations of hand- of death — in fact, the artist welcomes the painters since Glenfiddich’s 1886 inception. In macabre. In 2017, Henderson was selected another nod to the local setting Henderson to participate in the acclaimed Glenfiddich used anthracite coal, normally part of the Residency in the Scottish Highlands. During scotch smoking process, to create large-scale the residency, he produced numerous projects drawings of the 22 major arcana tarot cards. that relate to all things ‘spirit,’ including the At the distillery “[the] air smells like scotch artists’ book To Conjure from Vapour, one copy and there is lovely spring water all over the of which was acquired by Banff Centre’s Paul D. place … you can’t help but be seduced by the Fleck Library and Archives in 2018. Henderson space,” says Henderson. The phrasing on the creates a metaphysical art experience you cards, tasting notes like “The memory of a can hold in your hands, modelled after the bee sting on your lips,” conjures a similar air traditional format of a tarot deck. The 78 cards of seduction for the reader. Paul D. Fleck each feature an invented phrase in the format Library and of a scotch tasting note, inspired by the Henderson has a spreadsheet pairing each of Archives at des­criptions of expert scotch tasters. the 78 cards with the 78 scotches he actually Banff Centre tasted — but it’s a list only he’s privy to. This is generously To replace the traditional suit images found is intentional; Henderson wants to evoke the supported in tarot decks, Henderson drew inspiration reader’s imagination when interacting with through the from the various spiritcraft tools used in the deck’s predictive and illusive futurisms. Bobbye Ruth the Glenfiddich Distillery: barrel staves for In speaking about the culture of scotch and Dewitt L. wands, clocks for coins, glasses for cups, and Potter Library tasting, Henderson notes that there is often hammers for swords. To further evoke a sense Endowment Fund a sense of “certainty and fact” when being of place in the work, Henderson meticulously and the William told what a particular scotch should taste designed an original typeface for the cards and Nona Heaslip like. He subverts this authoritative stance by (Spirit Receiver #1 Condensed light) that was Endowment imbuing To Conjure from Vapour with a swirling for Archives for inspired by the style of hand-painted signs air of mystery — or, one might say, spirit. Performing Arts.​ JESSICA (OPPOSITE) WITTMAN JESSICA AND ARTIST, THE OF COURTESY CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 9 Renowned Canadian architects designed artist retreats that are perfect spaces for creation. Here’s the next in our ongoing series exploring Banff Centre’s Leighton Artists Studios. Grounded in Nature BY RYAN McINTOSH

THE LEIGHTON ARTISTS STUDIOS, opened in 1985, are nine unique studio spaces for artists working in all genres. The Hemingway area is located on campus, but nestled Alumni: in the forest in a world all its own. Each of the eight original studios was Lawrence Hill named for the distinguished architect who designed it, and each space is unique in its Karen Connelly look and feel. The beautiful, secluded spaces Alistair MacLeod have housed writers, composers, singer- songwriters, visual artists, screenwriters, Michael Redhill playwrights, translators, curators, theorists, and more. It’s the perfect place to escape into your thoughts and focus on creation. The Hemingway Studio is one of the most iconic studios of the group and has hosted countless writers in its history. Designed by British architect Peter Hemingway and inspired by Haida architecture, the studio is circular with an asymmetrical cone roof that sits on 12 free-standing wood columns, creating a unity with the natural environment. Speaking of the project, Hemingway said: “I want to develop the feeling that this sculpture grew from Banff soil, just like a morel or a Douglas fir.” Inside the space is a prominent floor-to-ceiling window that creates a “light wall,” filling the studio with natural light and a serene ambience fitting for extended writing sessions and creativity. Original floor plan Maintenance of the studios is supported by the of the Hemingway Leighton Artists Studios Facility Renewal Endowment. Studio for writers, by Peter Hemingway. (courtesy of the Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives).

banffcentre.ca STUDIO VISIT

Have a 360° look at more studios and spaces on campus at facebook.com/banffcentre PHOTO CREDIT: CHRIS AMAT CHRIS CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 11 THE ART OF CONDUCTION Musical marvel Tyshawn Sorey on the improvisational practice that changed the way he plays

BY GARVIA BAILEY

banffcentre.ca THERE IS NO DOUBT that Tyshawn Sorey is And after Butch’s passing you wanted to extraordinary behind a drum kit, but the MacArthur share conduction with others? Fellow contains multitudes. Sorey is a multi- instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, and For me there’s no such thing as composition educator. Anyone who has heard him play or versus improvisation or vice versa. There was no been in his orbit knows that he approaches all such thing when I worked with him. And so that of the above with a spirit of infinite creativity set the precedent for me sort of explore that in and big-hearted generosity. All of that is on full my own music. I began to write detailed, more display in his role as the co-artistic director of the concert-length type music for my ensembles and I Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative wanted to use conduction. I’ve been working with Music. It’s here that he turns minds inside out the method ever since. It’s just incredible, all the by transferring his knowledge of conduction, an excitement happening within my ensembles and energized multifarious improvisational technique, having all of these musicians taking chances. pioneered by the late Lawrence ‘Butch’ Morris. We sat down to talk about continuing the legacy I got the chance to speak to some of the Banff of creating space for musical exploration. Centre residents after they had spent a few hours participating in your conduction session We all tend to carry a bit of our early teachers [summer 2018]. And they were all flying so high, with us, but your connection to the conductor, skirting this line between reverence and musician, and visionary Butch Morris goes even unfettered glee. They could barely articulate further. Can you tell me about your relationship the experience. Can you relate to that feeling? with Butch and his relationship with conduction? I can understand that feeling. When you’re coming The great conductor and cornetist, the late out of any kind of conduction the feeling is, “what just Lawrence Butch Morris, was a mentor to me happened?” As a drummer, I was always interested coming up. He brought me on one of my first trips in avant garde musical practices in addition to playing to Europe and he hired me when more “traditional” types of jazz I was super young. I was maybe music. I was interested in all of it. 21 or so when I joined his group And so when Butch Morris asked and Vijay [Ayer, Artistic Director FOR ME me to participate, now I’m in this of Jazz at Banff Centre] was also THERE’S NO ensemble with harp, traditional there at that time, so we both SUCH THING AS southeast Asian instruments, performed in Butch Morris groups African instruments, and all these in New York together in the early COMPOSITION handmade instruments, electronics 2000s. Conduction is a practice of VERSUS guitars. We had all of these really improvisation that’s done in real fantastic improvisers in this group time where you give a visual cue IMPROVISATION and I knew that what we’d be doing for the musician(s) to generate OR VICE VERSA was experimental, but I didn’t think content. It can be hand signals, that it would challenge me quite it can be signs, it can be all that. like it did in terms of my role as a drummer. My role was not, in fact, as a drummer — Butch crafted this art form in a really beautiful I learned that from my first performance working way. He never taught conduction to anyone, but with Butch. I had to play beyond whatever I thought when I did it with him it fascinated me so much that was. I had to serve the music in a way that would that I ended up writing this paper about him for my not make me think “drum set” anymore. That was senior thesis at William Paterson, where I did my really transformative for me. My relationship with my undergraduate study in jazz performance. And the instrument had completely changed from working students [there] thought I was just making this stuff with Butch, so I’m glad to see that it’s inspiring. up. They were all like, ‘how is this even possible?’ Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music is PHOTO CREDIT: JESSICA WITTMAN JESSICA CREDIT: PHOTO generously funded by TD Bank Group as the Lead Supporter.

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 13 PHOTO CREDIT: JASON STANG JASON CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca Cross the threshold into a world of spirits, puppets, and betrayal with Ghost Opera

BY TATUM DOOLEY PHOTO CREDIT: JASON STANG JASON CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 15 IT BEGINS WITH A FAMILIAL BETRAYAL: a nephew pushes his Aunt Phillipa down a well, killing her. The impulse is motivated by money — he wants to inherit her mansion so he can pay off his debts. He plays the role of the grieving relative, covering up his tracks by instructing pallbearers to unknowingly bury a statue instead of his aunt and scoffs at the request for two coins to be placed over her eyes to ferry her into the afterlife. Welcome to Ghost Opera.

In an exciting twist, the opera’s main characters — greedy nephew included — are played by puppets operated by members of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop. Presented in collaboration with Old Trout, Calgary Opera, and Banff Centre, the performance features a libretto by Giller Prize-winning author André Alexis and music by Veronika Krausas. The result is a musical ode that’s like a Greek tragedy with hints of Shakespearean betrayal.

“I do a lot of adapting from the Greek — it’s something I enjoy doing. By now it’s familiar to me,” says Alexis, whose 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning book, Fifteen Dogs, involves Greek gods giving dogs the power to think like humans. “When I thought about doing something Greek and a ghost story, it naturally occurred to wonder what the earliest ghost story was. That was a story from Pliny the Elder, a Roman philosopher,” he says.

After her murder, guests come and go through Phillipa’s house, none being able to withstand the ire of her ghost. Having been wronged in her death, she is not set on forgiveness. Her vindictiveness is admirable; she’s ABOVE: Puppet heads are layered with paint not content with letting her nephew and varnish to acheive a statued effect. off easy. Yet the play isn’t solely about OPPOSITE: A team of eight work tirelessly vengeance. Phillipa becomes a vessel for weeks to bring every movement, through which the audience can detail, and personality to life. explore the philosophical dilemmas PHOTO CREDIT: KAITLIN KEALEY KAITLIN CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca of what it means to die — and live. The constant turnover of guests in the now-haunted home emulates the mundane cycles of living, albeit with a supernatural twist.

“We’re telling a ghost story from the perspective of the ghosts,” says Peter Balkwill, the Old Trout puppet master and co-director of Ghost Opera. “It’s about them asking those questions, and through those situations, we as artists get to ask the questions as well.” The philosophical nature of a play whose purpose is to ask questions fits with the Greek-inspired narrative and lends gravity to the staging. “We like to create work that asks more questions than provides answers. What does it mean to be mortal? What does it mean to be immortal? Is there an afterlife?” he continues.

As the show goes on, the house that Phillipa once loved becomes covered in moss and falls into disrepair. The tropes of erosion, broken objects, and forgotten artifacts are woven into the narrative and staging of the play, creating a polarity between physical and spiritual death: while Phillipa’s physical body is gone, her spirit remains. When Athenodorous, an old philosopher, moves into the home, Phillipa’s ghost turns the tables on him: “Everyone already IS a ghost. They merely inhabit a thing, a rotting thing. They do not know it until they discard it,” she tells him. Ghost Opera leaves the audience members considering their own mortality among other big philosophical questions. “[Ghost Opera] is tied to the notion of WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT DOING home, the disappearance of home, SOMETHING GREEK AND A the unwillingness to leave home,” says Alexis. It also accentuates the way GHOST STORY, IT NATURALLY home is built around around a physical place, and the people and spirits that OCCURRED TO WONDER WHAT THE inhabit said place. EARLIEST GHOST STORY WAS.

PHOTO CREDIT: KAITLIN KEALEY KAITLIN CREDIT: PHOTO André Alexis

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 17 The setting of its world premiere, Banff the story?” says Balkwill. The visuals Centre’s Eric Harvie Theatre, allows in Ghost Opera neatly coincide with the production to take ambitious the story being told, creating an all- staging risks such as a well built into encompassing experience. the set and an aerial portion with the puppets levitating overtop the The puppets in the show are carved stage. The extremes of what the set from clay. Their faces sag, as if the allows the characters predicaments of life and death have to do on stage — be a gravitational pull, and maybe they do. WE LIKE TO buried, levitate — can “You regard it as a piece of visual art be read as a metaphor when it’s not in performance,” says CREATE for the afterlife. Each Balkwill. “Theatre can be a slightly choice in the staging disposable art. What is beautiful about WORK THAT of this production puppetry is that at the end of the day, has been chosen to you still have the puppet, they never ASKS MORE carefully complement get thrown away.” The standalone the narrative. For potential of the puppets, their ability QUESTIONS example, the team to exist outside the theatre as works THAN PROVIDES noticed the puppeteers of art, creates another layer to Ghost and singers — referred Opera. The puppeteers face the ANSWERS. to in the show notes challenge of breaking the puppets free as fantasmas, Latin of their status as inanimate objects Peter Balkwill for apparitions — cast while on stage. It’s the puppeteer’s shadows on the back job to “ask the audience to place their wall and decided to work with it. “The focus on the puppet and be gracious shadows of the performers look like with their own ego to bring the puppet a host of ghostly spirits; is there a to life. It’s a shared experience between way for us to incorporate the notion performer and audience,” says Balkwill. of a spiritual chorus into the fabric of PHOTO CREDIT: KAITLIN KEALEY KAITLIN CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca Members of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop hand-craft 14 puppets for the show to let the dead tell their side of the story.

Another deep connection between audience and performer is the chorus, whose role in Greek theatre is a meta-commentary on the play as it happens, bringing those who watch into the narrative. “The chorus in other works I’ve done has been a way of commenting on the action,” says Alexis. “Although that’s what happens here too, it’s more about the community — the people in that place wondering about ghosts and whether a house is haunted or not,” he continues. Other characters, such as the pallbearers, each with Disney-like names such as Grump, Smart, and Careful, fulfill a role adjacent to the traditional chorus, imbuing logic and comedy into the production.

In Ghost Opera, an old story is made new, with characters facing timeless questions — something the genre of opera has always done well. The addition of puppets just takes it one step further. “Opera is so well-suited for puppetry, because opera exists of grand epic themes. They really go for the peak of the mountain for almost every existential question we have: life, love, death,” says Balkwill. “In that way they can go in, explore, and address these grand questions. Puppets are able to defy a sense of mortality.”

Learn more about the May 24 production of Ghost Opera and buy tickets at banffcentre.ca PHOTO CREDIT: KAITLIN KEALEY KAITLIN CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 19 Animating Our Stories

For Indigenous storytellers, the medium may have changed, but the message stays the same

BY ALISON TEDFORD

I COME FROM A FAMILY OF ARTISTS, though To that end, a new program through Banff it feels like I don’t have much artist in me Centre’s Indigenous Arts department called some days. My hands shake, blurring the Animating Our Stories gives an opportunity lines of creation and obscuring that which I to package our stories in a new way. The would like to bring to life. My son, however, residency is designed to help Indigenous seems to have inherited the artistic talent in storytellers relay their narratives to young the family. I watch him bent over his drawing audiences by creating immersive and desk, creating his latest masterpiece, educational worlds. With guidance from manipulating his pencil over the page to the program’s faculty and an illustrator, make something out of nothing. It inspires participants will bring their stories to life me and makes me feel proud to be his mom. through animation and digital media.

While I’m not an artist, I am a storyteller — I spoke with lead faculty member for the an Indigenous storyteller. Historically, program, Monique Gray Smith, who shared storytelling was primarily an oral tradition her perspective of how Animating Our among my people. My voice as a storyteller Stories comes together with the atmosphere is that of an Indigenous woman of the of Banff Centre. For Gray Smith, the Centre internet age. Despite the best efforts of provides the opportunity to remove oneself colonization, the stories of my people from “busy” — to connect with nature, quiet, remain, but it’s the way these stories are stillness and just create. shared with the world that’s changed. The method of transmission has shifted from “When they take that time to pause and one voice, to one book, to one ebook, film, connect, the ideas come,” says Gray Smith. blog, tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram “And then to be able to go into an environment story. The medium has changed but the — a place that has [the technology] and the message remains: we are still here. Our most amazing support people to help them perspectives are still here. Our culture is bring that story, illustration, and animation to vibrant and alive. life — that’s powerful, I think.”

banffcentre.ca Exerpts from You Hold Me Up and My Heart Fills with Happiness written by Monique Gray Smith. Illustrations by Danielle Daniel (top) and Julie Flett (bottom). Artwork used with the permission of Orca Book Publishers.

You hold me up when you are kind to me

My heart fills with happiness when... ni sâkaskineh mîyawâten niteh ohcih

I feel the sun dancing on my cheeks ni mosihaw pîsim ota nikwâkanihk

We are still here. Our perspectives are still here. Our culture is vibrant and alive.

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 21 A psychiatric nurse-turned-writer, Gray content producers, and digital media artists Smith credits the development of her craft to explore technology together and allow to the skill of “noticing” things, which she the structures of their practices to evolve. honed as a nurse. For her, the art of play is central to the process of creating. In This program provides a unique and important that sense, Animating Our Stories is the opportunity. Sharing our stories helps keep chance to not only work hard to create our culture — Indigenous culture — alive. something, but also to have fun doing it. It allows us, as Indigenous people, to contribute to the broader community It’s a chance for emerging or established through our creative work. The integration Indigenous writers and illustrators of of digital media within storytelling is also narrative fiction or poetry for young readers particularly fitting — Indigenous people to bring a completed work to life in the have always been innovators. creative chrysalis of Banff Centre. Their interest in digital storytelling techniques Animating Our Stories is a natural extension doesn’t need to be supported by previous of that spirit of innovation, with a reverence experience with digital media, but rather by a for art, which I appreciate coming from desire to delve into new forms of storytelling. a family of artists and raising a budding artist myself. It allows the storytellers of Faculty comprised of Indigenous authors, a today to bring their stories to life in new graphic designer, and a digital animator will ways for the audiences of tomorrow. facilitate the process, helping to fuse the art of storytelling with modern technology. Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre is generously It’s a collaboration that allows storytellers, supported by RBC and The Slaight Family Foundation.

When [artists] take that time to pause and connect, the ideas come.

Attend the Animating our Stories Open Studio on June 9. Learn more at banffcentre.ca PHOTO CREDIT: CENTRIC PHOTOGRAPHY (MONIQUE GRAY SMITH) GRAY (MONIQUE PHOTOGRAPHY CENTRIC CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca PHOTO CREDIT: CENTRIC PHOTOGRAPHY (MONIQUE GRAY SMITH) GRAY (MONIQUE PHOTOGRAPHY CENTRIC CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 23 Leading in a Time of Peril and Possibility

Leadership for social impact in a time when the old systems

no longer serve us BY ERIN WOODS

“There is such urgency in the multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remember that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional work.” adrienne maree brown PHOTO CREDIT: DONALD LEE DONALD CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca SOCIAL INNOVATION, SYSTEMS When Dr. Westley, Dr. Julian Norris, Norris and Suncor Energy Foundation. LEADERSHIP, AND LEADERSHIP FOR and others designed the Banff Centre This multi-session program, with an SOCIAL CHANGE are all, in one way Leadership program Getting to anticipated launch of fall 2020, will or another, dedicated to shifting Maybe they hoped it would equip include on-site intensive modules, the way individuals, organizations, people with a renewed sense of self in-community learning, wilderness and communities address the in an increasingly complex world. experiences, individual mentoring and most complex and often daunting For the past four years, a cohort of coaching, and an open source learning issues of our time. Leaders in these carefully selected change agents platform, all in service of learning and fields are tasked with personal from across Canada have gathered impact at the individual, collective, transformation and system-wide on campus to bring that vision to and systemic levels simultaneously. intervention, and they need the skills life: to create new frameworks for “In the coming years, the turbulence to do both. According to author real system change, in a world that and uncertainty are likely to increase and social innovation researcher needs change now more than ever. as previously stable systems lose Dr. Frances Westley, there are eight their coherence and we oscillate common factors shared by genuinely wildly between peril and possibility, transformative social innovations. We are designing between consciousness and • The capacity to articulate a strong this program catastrophe,” says Norris. and appealing “counter-truth” that “We are designing this program for presents a compelling alternative for people who people who sense the fierce urgency vision to the current reality sense the fierce of this moment and are committed • A powerful and often courageous urgency of this to positive change. Real world leaders, tenacity in moving the desired volunteers, activists, and organizers change forward – even if that moment and are working at the frontlines. And we are requires compromise offering it because we believe it is pos- committed to sible to make a difference,” says Norris. • The skill, agility, and risk tolerance to sense and seize opportunity positive change. Through this new program, along when it arises with the many other social impact and Indigenous Leadership programs • A long term commitment and To date, close to a hundred participants perspective that results in from all sectors have taken the knowl- offered, Banff Centre will build on its service and selflessness edge they’ve gained in the program to commitment to support leaders to address some of the most complex become more effective activators, The self-awareness and • challenges in the country, and in their creators, and drivers for positive maturity necessary to tolerate communities, in radical new ways. From social impact. “The pattern of tomor- paradox and ambiguity HIV awareness and reduction within row depends on what we do today,” • The capacity to generatively Black communities in Edmonton to a says Norris. “No matter who you engage conflict and shadow brand new innovation hub for public are and where you are situated, you servants in B.C., it’s no exaggeration to have a part to play. How you partic- • Alignment with deep purpose say the people who leave this program ipate in this moment matters.” • A systems orientation and go on to make a profound impact. Banff Centre’s new Leadership for Social cross-scale approach to change For participants, faculty, funders, and Impact program is generously supported supporters alike, it has been an extraor- It is significant to note that at least by the Suncor Energy Foundation. This six of the eight factors are directly dinary and deeply hopeful endeavour. work is developed with support from the related to the state of being — rather That’s why Banff Centre is building Peter Lougheed Leadership Initiative, than just the knowledge or technical on this legacy and its commitment in partnership with the University of skills — of the innovators. There is a to Leadership for Social Impact by Alberta, made possible by funding from the Government of Alberta. growing understanding of the link embarking on the ambitious design of between the mindset required to a new 18-month fellowship for change understand complex systems and the agents and system entrepreneurs. deeply personal capacities required This project represents an ongoing to act effectively within them. That’s and significant relationship with why having a space to learn and try many of Getting to Maybe’s original and sometimes fail is so important. supporters and guides, including Dr. PHOTO CREDIT: DONALD LEE DONALD CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 25 The Monster Within

Alberta Ballet’s Jean Grand-Maître explores the dark heart of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

BY KAIJA PEPPER

First draft drawing of The Creature by Anne-Séguin Poirier.

banffcentre.ca IN MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, “The idea of a human who comes to life in the human creature formed and brought a world without God was truly terrifying in to life by the young scientist Victor the age of industrialism, and Shelley’s story Frankenstein learns to speak and reason is even more believable today. Just look fluently. He even reads Milton’sParadise at all that’s going on in genetics and with Lost and is moved by the epic poem’s artificial intelligence,” says Grand-Maître. depiction of “an omnipotent God warring “Some say that Mary Shelley’s scientist and with his creatures.” Sorrowfully, he the monster have become one.” compares himself to Adam, who had the good fortune to be “guarded by the special Frankenstein, an ambitious and highly care of his Creator,” and to Satan, with rational man driven to push the bounds whom he shares “the bitter gall of envy.” of scientific knowledge, suffers pangs of conscience only once it is too late to Popular culture tends to ignore the inner avoid the death and destruction resulting consciousness of Shelley’s unnamed from his successful experiment to and abandoned being, as in the 1931 generate life. Transposing his scientific Hollywood movie of Frankenstein starring hubris to the present day was key to the mute and lumbering Boris Karloff. how Grand-Maître and his design team But his complex psychology fascinates found a way into the ballet when they met Alberta Ballet’s artistic director Jean for initial discussions last December. Grand-Maître, a newly minted member of the Order of Canada known for his “We felt that by making our Frankenstein “portrait ballets” inspired by the music of contemporary, people would connect Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang, and other pop icons. to it in a more profound way than they would as a period piece,” he explains. As he researches his next ballet, based on Shelley’s 1818 science fiction masterpiece, Their Victor Frankenstein, who will be Grand-Maître finds himself impressed by danced by long-time company member the “utter originality” of this gothic tale, Kelley McKinlay, attends MIT. His ill-fated which has accumulated resonance over honeymoon will be set in Whistler. And the 200 years since its first publication, the finale, which, in the novel, takes growing to mythic proportions. place on an 18th-century ship stranded in Arctic ice, unfolds at a meteorological station in Yukon. Cell phones will replace Shelley’s series of letters.

Grand-Maître intends to tackle the actual The success in creating this choreography only once the company is role will be to capture the human in residence at Banff Centre in July. That’s when Zacharie Dun, cast as The Creature, trapped in the monster. joins him in the studio to find a vocabulary Jean Grand-Maître and develop “a real theatrical character.”

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 27 To be really creative is like throwing yourself off a cliff, so support is very important. Liz Vandal

Despite being created from a mishmash Members of the company will also of body parts, the creature-cum-monster contribute to Designing for Dance, a acquires impressive physical prowess. workshop where designers can prototype “Mary Shelley describes how he can move their ideas on actual dancers, offered as like a panther, or run up a mountain, or part of Banff Centre’sCreative Gesture climb an iceberg at incredible speed,” says program. A dance costume can only Grand-Maître. “He’s like a panther that’s be truly seen when it’s viewed in action been put together with the wrong parts, onstage, explains former program faculty so there’s going to have to be a spare Liz Vandal, one of two Andrea Brussa wheel somewhere in the choreography! Master Artists who has lead the workshop. I want to evolve the creature’s vernacular Besides animating the costumes for the from being unable to stand at the international mix of designer participants, beginning of the ballet to a very agile, the dancers will be able to provide practical discombobulated, arrhythmic movement.” feedback on how a costume facilitates or hampers their often extreme movement. At over six feet, Dun is the tallest dancer in the company, helpful in depicting a Hunkering down at Banff Centre, “so close creature “of a gigantic stature … about to the clouds, a sense of family builds,” eight feet in height,” as Shelley wrote. What says Vandal. Being together in this intense really matters, though, goes deeper. “The artistic climate generates ideas and a success in creating this role,” says Grand- collaborative spirit she says. “To be really Maître, “will be to capture the human creative is like throwing yourself off a cliff, trapped in the monster. That being is, at so support is very important.” first, good and wants to learn, but because people find his appearance so disturbing, Grand-Maître agrees, describing Banff they chase him away and believe he’s Centre as “a sanctuary, where everything dangerous.” The complications of brings you to a place of extreme creativity: human passion in the face of rejection you’re surrounded by the beauty of nature and loneliness, taken to an extreme, and also by creative people. It sparks ideas.” turn the creature into a brutal killer. He looks forward to exploring those ideas, While Grand-Maître explores choreography step by step, with his dancers in the for Frankenstein’s cast of characters, the studio. Together, they will shape a ballet 12 Alberta Ballet dancers accompanying in which horror arises not from blood on him to Banff Centre will be busy as the stage, but from the darkness within. well with other company repertoire projects. These involve studio time with Montreal’s Anne Plamondon, who is creating a new piece, and Alberta Ballet’s associate artistic director Christopher Anderson, who is staging Swan Lake.

banffcentre.ca Attend the Frankenstein Open Rehearsal July 27. Learn more at banffcentre.ca

RIGHT: Order of Canada recipient and choreographer Jean Grand-Maître (photo courtesy of the artist). BELOW: Zacharie Dun as The Creature from Frankenstein (photo courtesy of Alberta Ballet).

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 29 Putting Yourself Into Your Writing

What excites you about delving into the intersection of Electric Literature’s fiction, autofiction, and autobiography during this program? executive director Halimah: We will get to talk about this taboo topic of turning one’s life into fiction and, hopefully, create a safe on the space where environment to be able to do that. I’m interested in looking at — pragmatically — what you take from life and what you autobiography and make up, and how those two sources work together. fiction collide I’m also excited to have a faculty that is equipped to talk about the really different aspects of this process. [Guest faculty] Susan Choi’s latest novel is actually neither BY SARA KING-ABADI autofiction, nor autobiography — it’s fiction — but it still deals with these questions in a very interesting way.

HALIMAH MARCUS GREW UP OUTSIDE PHILADELPHIA in a suburb called Narberth, where she spent her How can writers tease out narratives from their childhood writing plays, journaling, and climbing trees. personal lives and make them something that’s as The executive director of Electric Literature started as sparkling or as magic as a great piece of fiction? a volunteer with the online publishing house in August The process is really private. Even when I’m editing 2010, the same time she moved to Brooklyn to pursue a piece I would never ask [the writer], how much her MFA at Brooklyn College, and has been with Electric really happened and where are you veering from Lit ever since. Marcus is also the co-founder and editor reality? It would be a completely inappropriate of the site’s weekly fiction series, Recommended question, and that’s why it’s one that I want to Reading, and will join Banff Centre in August as an talk about. Anyone who’s been in a workshop has editorial publishing mentor for the Literary Arts program heard a writer receives the criticism that something Autobiography and Fiction with Electric Literature. they’ve written isn’t “believable,” and they retort, PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST THE OF COURTESY CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca Join the program’s guest speaker Dionne Brand for a reading August 20. banffcentre.ca

I’m interested in...what you take from life and what you make up, and how those two sources work together.

“But it really happened!” Well, that’s no excuse. The [As a writer] , there is this constant rollercoaster where writer has to convince us it happened, regardless I’m personally very blind to the quality of whatever of whether there’s a correlative event in real life. I’m writing. If you put your work away for three weeks or three months, that’s when you might have Do you think there’s any danger in putting some perspective and you can decide if it’s ready too much of yourself into your writing? to submit. Unfortunately, it just takes a long time. There are lots of dangers. Writing is completely Another thing I recommend to writers is to volunteer as vulnerable. It might upset people you love, and a reader for a literary magazine. Reading submissions anytime you publish writing you’re opening yourself can give additional perspective on the quality of to criticism. But if you don’t put yourself into your your work and where it falls in the spectrum of writing, it will be difficult to write anything worthwhile. what’s being submitted. It also shows you how truly The way you pour yourself into your writing could subjective this stuff is, so that can be a comfort be completely unrecognizable — I’m not saying as well. If you get rejected from one magazine, it that autobiographical writing is superior — but I do can give you the resilience to apply to another. believe vulnerability has intrinsic artistic merit. How do you think a residency like this can help a writer In this program, you’re the editorial publishing to develop their own unique voice? mentor. What advice would you give to a writer Time and guidance is the most precious thing — having working in fiction, non-fiction, or somewhere in the mental and physical space. Being in an environment between, to make their submission stand out? where you can have discussions that light your mind up, Every writer must deal with the challenge of their and then having two weeks to spend just seeing where subjectivity. The fear that their own judgment is not those questions and discussions take your work. trustworthy. When I write, I think, “This is amazing,” and then one second later I think, “This is garbage.” PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST THE OF COURTESY CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 31 A CLASSICAL MUSIC LEGACY IN THE MOUNTAINS

Honouring the 10 year anniversary of the Yolande and Howard Freeze Fund for Music and its impact on the Banff International String Quartet Competition a decade later

BY LYNDA VANG

FOR BARRY SHIFFMAN, it all started resources needed for strategic career with a snowy drive back to Banff development; and the Yolande Freeze over the winter holidays. Arts Master Artists in Music Fund, which lover and philanthropist Yolande supports internationally renowned Freeze left a voicemail message faculty, commissions, and scholarships letting the executive director of the for music programs. Banff International String Quartet Although both Yolande and Howard Competition know that she and her enjoyed their own painting practices, it husband, Howard, were putting aside TOP: Summer in was later in life that Yolande developed Banff (photo by money to help Barry with his music a strong affinity for music. “My mother Noel Hendrickson). programming work at Banff Centre. was an avid classical music lover,” “I will never forget that day,” reflects LEFT: 10th Banff says daughter Caroline Freeze, who Shiffman. It was in this moment, over International String continues to attend Banff Centre music a decade ago, while navigating snowy Quartet Competition, events in memory of her mother. “My Rob Kapilow and roads through the snow-capped mother had hundreds of CDs that she Isobel Rolston with mountains, that the Yolande and would play endlessly. We would always Stringendo Quartet Howard Freeze Fund for Music began have classical music playing in the (photo by Donald Lee). to take shape. house.” Towards the end of her life, RIGHT: Yolande This three-million-dollar legacy gift Yolande wanted to extend that love Freeze courtesy of established three funds: the Freeze of music by establishing her legacy Caroline Freeze. Family Instrument Fund, focused as a committed arts supporter and on acquiring Yolande’s favourite champion. “My mother loved Banff instrument, the piano; the Freeze and as a family, we would spend many Family Career Development Program holidays there,” says Caroline. “We also Fund - BISQC, a fund that aids the long knew the Rolstons, Tom and Isobel, term career development of BISQC as they were good family friends of laureates by providing the financial ours and together we would all visit

banffcentre.ca Banff Centre and enjoy the concerts.” record of recognizing the best of the Yolande’s strong connection to the new generation of chamber ensembles. Centre and its commitment This year’s 13th competition includes to the next generation of a new partnership with Southern THE RESULT...HAS classical musicians made for a Methodist University (SMU) that will gift that came from the heart. give the 2019 First Prize Laureates BEEN NOTHING a paid two-year residency in Dallas, “In the end, my mother felt Texas. This, in addition to generous that giving to Banff Centre LESS THAN cash prizes, residency opportunities at would be the best way to Banff Centre, and a three-year artistic TRANSFORMATIONAL. encourage arts and creation and career development program in Canada, while also ensuring Barry Shiffman has cemented the competition as that her legacy would live on.” one of the most coveted prizes in the Since its inception in 1983, the triennial international competition industry. Banff International String Quartet The competition is widely regarded Competition has held a consistent around the world due in large part to

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 33 the extraordinary reputation of Banff allow us to take advantage of important Centre in the realm of chamber music strategic career opportunities that and the resources made available otherwise we would have to turn down,” through the Freeze Family Fund. explains Shiffman. “The result, after a decade of support from the Freeze “BISQC has dramatically grown career Family Fund on our programming and opportunities for our laureates,” says the long term career development of director Barry Shiffman. “Much of our laureates, has been nothing less MY MOTHER FELT that growth can be tied directly to the than transformational.” THAT GIVING TO generosity of the Freeze family and the creation of the BISQC fund.” Over the It is without a doubt that the legacy BANFF CENTRE course of a decade the Freeze Family of Yolande and Howard Freeze Fund has enabled Shiffman and his will continue to live on beyond the WOULD BE THE team to make long term strategic plans mountains of Banff. “We are starting for the competition while also allowing to see the long term impact and see BEST WAY TO laureates to take advantage of pivotal the extraordinary things that artists career development opportunities that are able to do with support from the ENCOURAGE otherwise would not be available. fund, in Banff and internationally,” says Caroline. “I think if you can support ARTS AND After the competition, laureates receive artists then you are doing the work to many opportunities that play key roles contribute and promote Canadian art CREATION IN in their career development. For the and culture [to] the world, and I am so Rolston String Quartet, first prize proud that our fund can do just that. CANADA, WHILE laureates of the 2016 competition, If my mother was to see the impact it was a debut performance at of the fund and how it supports the ALSO ENSURING Carnegie Hall; for 2013 winners cultivation of art and help bring it onto the Dover Quartet it was a debut in THAT HER LEGACY the world stage, I know that would very Vienna, or maybe it’s the opportunity much please her.” WOULD LIVE ON. to record for Radio France or CBC. These opportunities are vital for career Caroline Freeze The 2019 Banff International String Quartet advancement, however the costs Competition is generously supported by the associated with travel, hotel, and Freeze Family Career Development Program logistics are often out of reach for most Fund - BISQC, The Azrieli Foundation quartets. “The Freeze family funding and many other valued patrons. To learn has allowed us to bring resources to more about legacy gifts and endowments offset logistical and travel costs and at Banff Centre visit banffcentre.ca

banffcentre.ca LEFT: 2016 BISQC winners Rolston String Quartet: Luri Lee, violin; Jeff Dyrda, violin; Hezekiah Leung, viola; Jonathan Lo, cello (photo by Donald Lee). RIGHT: Innagural BISQC winners Colorado Quartet, 1983. Julie Rosenfeld, violin; Deborah Redding, violin; Francesca Martin, viola; Sharon Prater, cello. BELOW: 1992 winners St.Lawrence String Quartet: Barry Shiffman, violin; Marina Hoover, cello; Lesley Robertson, viola; Geoff Nuttall, violin (photos courtesy of Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives).

THE BISQC LAUREATES 2016 Rolston String Quartet 2013 Dover Quartet 2010 Cecilia String Quartet 2007 Tinalley String Quartet 2004 Jupiter String Quartet 2001 Daedalus Quartet 1998 Miró Quartet 1995 Amernet String Quartet 1992 St. Lawrence String Quartet 1989 Quatuor Manfred 1986 Franciscan Quartet 1983 Colorado Quartet

Learn more about the Banff International String Quartet Competition and buy tickets at bisqc.ca

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 35 Your Mountainside Escape

The Banff Centre hotel experience is more than impeccable service and exceptional views. For guests staying on campus, Banff Centre is a lively place to enjoy year-round events and activities, fine dining, wellness, art exhibits, and cultural performances.

Book your room today banffcentre.ca/hotels 1.800.884.7574 [email protected]

Dine with us

Fresh, local, and infused with creativity. Enjoy fine dining, bistro, or buffet options just steps away from theatres and gallery spaces.

Book your table today banffcentre.ca/dining

Photos by Tom Arban, Chris Amat (left), and Donald Lee (right). banffcentre.ca SPECIAL SECTION

Change the In the heart of the Rockies, life exists at extremes. By this we mean, revamp the Way You Travel classic dinner-and-a-movie night with an award-winning culinary experience at Three Ravens Restaurant and Wine Make Banff Centre your Bar followed by a performance in the Eric Harvie Theatre. With over 400 shows cultural haven this summer a year ranging from theatre to dance performances, concerts, and every artistic BY NICOLE MANFREDI collaboration in between, live entertainment is just minutes from your hotel room door.

Many tourist destinations offer standard If you crave long summer nights spent fare — long lines, packed itineraries, and outdoors, attend an open air concert in the the same old cookie-cutter activities. Shaw Amphitheatre and listen to some of That’s why immersing yourself in a your favourite bands hit the stage as the culture can change the way you travel. sun sets behind the mountains. And if bad weather forces you inside, check out the In addition to being a world-class arts latest in contemporary art exhibitions at training institution, Banff Centre also offers the Walter Phillips Gallery. With a multitude travellers the opportunity to experience of free events and workshops always the life of an artist in residence. Nestled popping up across campus, every day above the historic town and encircled by promises a new adventure for the whole the mountains, people come from family. It is in these small moments that all over the world to be inspired by the raw beauty of this place makes itself the Centre’s unparalleled panoramic known: Banff Centre invites travellers to views. So while the campus features experience culture as it’s being created. Book a room the amenities of a hotel — complete and get tickets with a fitness centre, indoor climbing Coming across an artist in the midst to a show at gym, pool, and on-campus dining of their creative process is not unlike banffcentre.ca and events — it never loses its wild the feeling of coming across the sensibilities. Guests find themselves wildlife who claim this campus as their immersed in an environment where home: you recognize immediately they are just as likely to step outside their that you’ve stumbled upon something hotel rooms and find a herd of deer grazing sacred, visceral, and impossibly fleeting, as they are a group of dancers rehearsing. something no itinerary can account for. PHOTO CREDIT: CHRIS AMAT CHRIS CREDIT: PHOTO

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 37 banffcentre.ca Guidelines

How artist Carmen Papalia puts access at the centre of his work

BY JACQUELINE BELL

Carmen Papalia, Blind Field Shuttle, 2010 - ongoing, Collaborative performance, New York, New York Photo by William Furio.

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 39 TOP: Carmen Papalia, White Cane Amplified, 2015 (image by Philip Lui, courtesy the artist). BOTTOM: Carmen Papalia, Blind Field Shuttle, 2010 - ongoing, Collaborative performance, Portland, Oregon (photo by Chris Snow). Blind Field Shuttle is a collaborative performance where groups of up to 90 participants line up behind Papalia, link arms, and agree to shut their eyes for the duration of a roughly hour-long walk through cities and rural landscapes. Papalia considers the performance an opportunity for participants to decentre vision as a central reference point and exercise their non-visual senses.

The work has the capacity to transform cultural institutions.

banffcentre.ca Attend Guidelines at Walter Phillips Gallery from June 15 — August 25. Learn more at banffcentre.ca

AT THE BEGINNING of the recording, you Papalia has committed to actively building this hear a tapping — then clicks, the sound of an community through his practice. For example, in object’s movement across pavement, and the the performance work, Blind Field Shuttle (2012 ring of something metal being struck. With the - ongoing), the artist invites participants to form a introduction of a narrative voice, the volume on the line behind him, put their hands on the shoulders track drops slightly. Still present, the background of the person in front of them, and to then close sounds can be followed in the moments between their eyes. The performance allows participants narration, inviting a subtle re-attunement to the to experience the world through senses beyond peripatetic movement the audio suggests. vision, and has taken place in the streets of New York, San Francisco, and this summer, Banff. This sound work by Carmen Papalia is composed of a series of field recordings taken at Banff The exhibition at Walter Phillips Gallery will also Centre in the winter of 2019. Holding a boom function as a physical space for this building mike and small recorder, staff and practicums of community, and a conceptual space for the from the Centre’s audio department followed continued articulation of a politics of de-centring the Vancouver-based artist as he traversed the the ocular in the field of visual art. The narration campus. Trying our best to keep the sound of our by Papalia in the audio work articulates the deep clunky winter boots from becoming audible in the sociocultural implications of contemporary art’s recording, we followed Papalia up frosty campus privileging of the visual. paths, through corridors, down stairwells, and into Walter Phillips Gallery, where his work will be “I didn’t realize the full impact of ocularcentrism presented as a part of the exhibition, Guidelines, until I told my friends who identify as blind with Vancouver-based artist Heather Kai Smith in about my work. Many of them had never been the summer of 2019. to a museum, let alone considered pursuing art practice,” he states in the recording. “The The field recordings of this walk produce an contemporary art landscape wasn’t organized so auditory experience that gestures to the tactile, people like them could represent themselves or and reflects Papalia’s experience using a cane as share their stories with the wider public. Instead, a mobility device. As a non-visual learner, a term the entire field privileged visuality; a tradition that Papalia embraces over the medicalizing language not only repressed unseen bodies of knowledge, of “blind” or “visually impaired,” his work considers but excluded non-visual culture with its own history the expanse of sensorial experiences that exist from participating.” beyond sight, as well as leading conversations on how accessibility is defined. In the work’s With implications both within and beyond the narration, we hear Papalia speak to his experience field of contemporary art, the work proposes a as an artist: “I struggled with the fact that vision methodology for access that has the capacity wasn’t my central reference point. I held space to not only transform cultural institutions, but to for myself by resisting language like ‘blind’, when change how access is understood more broadly what I really wanted was a community that valued within Canadian culture at large. non-visual perception.”

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 41 RIGHT: Raúl Aguilar Canela’s studio during the Winter Banff Artist in Residence program (photo by Jessica Wittman). BELOW: Fall Banff Artist in Residence Emilija Škarnulytė performs her mixed-media piece during Open Studios (photo by Abigaile Edwards).

Meet the artists and see their works in progress at our free Open Studio events. Learn more at banffcentre.ca

banffcentre.ca OPEN STUDIOS

The Artists Are Present Artists pull back the curtain on their workspaces for our regular Open Studio events, which are open to the public. Take a look inside some of their spaces...

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 43 Banff Artist in Residence Emmanuel Osahor experimented with concrete and paint during his residency, Winter 2018.

Thunder Bay-based artist Michel Dumont’s studio during the 2018 Fall Banff Artist in Residence program. PHOTO CREDIT: JESSICA WITTMAN, NAHANNI MCKAY (OPPOSITE) MCKAY NAHANNI WITTMAN, JESSICA CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca OPEN STUDIOS

Photographer Kali Spitzer’s studio during Open Studios for the 2018 The Space Between Us residency.

Studio of 2018 Banff International Curatorial Institute Fellow Sarah Fuller.

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 45 ABOVE: Indigenous Arts’ Urban Moose Hide Tanning Residency participant Sage Paul Cardinal and faculty Mandee McDonald work outside in the camp the group created on campus. RIGHT: Juno-winning artist Jeremy Dutcher performs with participants of the Canadian Indigenous Classical Music Gathering this winter (photos by Jessica Wittman).

Watch a video about the Urban Moose Hide Tanning Residency at banffcentre.ca/ InStudio

banffcentre.ca OPEN STUDIOS

Watch a video about SLIME at banffcentre.ca/ InStudio

LEFT: Sophia Wolfe performs in SLIME, a Banff Centre-commissioned production by The Only Animal, written by Bryony Lavery (photo by Donald Lee). BELOW: Canadian-Nigerian artist Morris Ogbowu, aka: Asuquomo performs bongos and vocals with fellow Banff Musicians in Residence during an open concert (photo by Jessica Wittman).

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 47 Mountainside Live in the Shaw Amphitheatre

Susan Aglukark & Leela Gilday June 30 Blue Rodeo July 7 Alvvays July 13 Jens Lindemann July 21 Frazey Ford & Welcome to your guide to Hawksley Workman Banff Centre’s summer July 27 2019 concerts and John Prine events! We’ve pulled August 8 out some highlights from every discipline, Bahamas but there’s lots more to August 11 see on our website. Visit banffcentre.ca for the latest date and location information, to find out Official Beer and Cider Supplier about our free events, of the Shaw Amphitheatre and to buy your tickets.

banffcentre.ca WHAT’S ON AT BANFF CENTRE

Learn more and buy tickets ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: MICHELLE NUGENT MICHELLE CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 49 EQ: Evolution of the String Quartet Performances July 16 – August 3 Evolution of the String Quartet (EQ) explores the string quartet lineage from Haydn to music made in Banff by and for the faculty and participants of EQ. Led by violinist Aisslinn Nosky along with an extraordinary group of soloists, composers, and scholars, EQ features faculty recitals by JACK Quartet, Parker Quartet, Eybler Quartet, and Quatuor Bozzini.

Creative Music Cabarets curated by Vijay Iyer August 8 + 9 + 13 + 14 + 15 +16 + 20 + 21 The Club Emerging musicians from the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music program perform with their internationally acclaimed mentors in evenings of experimentation.

Jazz and Creative Music Ensemble Showcase Ensemble Evolution August 10 + 17 + 23 Performances Margaret Greenham Theatre June 25 – July 13 Vijay Iyer leads world renowned faculty and participants through an Performances during Ensemble evening of jazz and creative music Evolution explore the evolving range exploration. Featuring co-artistic and depth of ensemble playing director Tyshawn Sorey. Concerts in the early 21st century. Hear large ensemble works examining sound, colour, and texture played A summer of world-class by world-class faculty and some of Tyshawn Sorey’s programming featuring an the brightest young performers. impressive list of faculty Autoschediasms for and participants. Featuring Autoschediasms by Tyshawn Sorey, How Forests Think Creative Orchestra Multiple concert dates. by Liza Lim, works by Alvin Lucier, August 22 Visit banffcentre.ca for more details. and faculty recitals by International Rolston Recital Hall Contemporary Ensemble, Peter Evans, Conducted improvisations with Matana Roberts, Mazz Swift, Miya Tyshawn Sorey and participants from Masaoka, Wilfrido Terrazas, and more. the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music.

Lead Program Supporter

banffcentre.ca WHAT’S ON AT BANFF CENTRE

Jens Lindemann July 21 + 24 + 25 Jens Lindemann is the first classical brass player to ever receive the Order of Canada and the foremost trumpet Experience powerful soloist in his country’s history. performances from internationally acclaimed choreographers Banff International and companies. String Quartet Competition Dance Bodytraffic August 26 – September 1 July 12 The world’s finest young string quartets Founded in 2007 by Lillian Rose descend upon the Canadian Rockies. Barbeito and Tina Finkelman Berkett, Through performances, lectures, and BODYTRAFFIC is a world-class special events, share in a dramatic contemporary dance company, and rich artistic journey that will set in known internationally for its Los motion a major performing career. Angeles-grown, contagious vivacity.

BISQC 2019 features 15 concerts to choose from, and accommodation Shay Kuebler and packages are available. Radical System Art present View full schedule at bisqc.ca. Epilogos July 18 Supported by Radical System Art aims to expand the art of physical performance through the lens of Artistic Director Shay Kuebler and a versatile amorphous language of dance, martial arts, theatre, music, and other forms – utilizing both film and stage as mediums to promote, disseminate, and enhance performance art.

Alberta Ballet Open Rehearsal: Excerpts from Frankenstein July 27 See excerpts from Alberta Ballet’s latest creation and other works in their Find more events, repertoire, and participate in a talk back information, and with artistic director Jean Grand-Maître. buy tickets at banffcentre.ca ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: MICHELLE NUGENT MICHELLE CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 51 National Indigenous Indigenous Arts Peoples Day Ghost Days: Animating Celebration Open Studio Our Stories: May 15 Open Studio Ghost Days: Making Art June 9 Friday, June 21 for Spirit is an experiment in conjuring and medium- Animating Our Stories is a ship, combined with art space where storytellers, You are invited to join us in and collaboration with content producers, and celebrating National Indigenous the living and with Spirit. digital media artists Participants create works collaborate to fuse modern Peoples Day at Banff Centre based on their personal presentation techniques with throughout the month of June. relationship with the concept the art of storytelling. Join us for an open presentation Banff Centre is excited to offer of spirit. This Open Studio will show evolution of their of the works in progress. a rich and unique immersion of connection to Spirit through arts and culture with Canada’s photo/film development, Intercultural sound art, performance, Indigenous peoples. and storytelling. Indigenous Choreographers Visit banffcentre.ca Dancers of for the full list of events. Damelahamid presents Creation Lab: Mînowin Open Studio June 21 May 24 Departing from the belief Through integrating that the body is the site of narrative, movement, song, emotional, cultural, political, performance, and new and spiritual history, the lab multimedia design, Mînowin supports the exploration connects landscapes and and creative development of Coastal form line with personal voice and physical contemporary perspectives vocabulary. The program of customary Indigenous explores the intersections dance forms. The Dancers of identity, movement, of Damelahamid aim to and creation. Join us for achieve this by drawing an open presentation of from our origin stories the works in progress. and exploring ways to translate this through a Indigenous Arts is supported by contemporary lens.

Read more about Seal bracelet making, Animating Our Stories National Indigenous on pages 20 — 22. Peoples Days 2018. Photo by Jessica Wittman.

banffcentre.ca WHAT’S ON AT BANFF CENTRE

Banff Centre is a great place to work for a season. Or four.

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is Canada’s largest post-graduate arts and leadership school. It is also a home for outstanding hotels, restaurants, Opera and conferences facilities. Ghost Opera No One’s Safe From sales to customer service, May 24 June 27 + 28 + 29 lifeguarding to marketing, front-of- Ghost Opera will be In No One’s Safe, you’re house to behind-the-scenes, be unlike anything anybody’s invited to immerse yourself part of something truly world-class seen before – a full-scale in a roving murder mystery of while fulfilling your career goals. puppet opera, bringing operatic proportions. Follow together the supernatural the characters through and the philosophical, the Banff Centre’s Leighton Don’t wait, apply today! comic and the fearsome, Artists Studios as they try banffcentre.ca/careers music and image, the to piece together who killed real and the surreal. one member of the family.

#OperaPub Silent Light June 7 + 14 A new opera based on Banff Legion the filmStellet Licht by Opera comes down the Carlos Reygadas hill (in jeans) for one of our favourite events, July 4 + 5 + 6 #OperaPub. Come hear Margaret Greenham Theatre some of Canada’s next Set within a Mennonite great opera singers sing community in northern arias and duets from your Mexico, the opera follows favourite operas, all from the a pious husband and comfort of your bar stool. father, Johan, whose strongly-held spiritual obligation to his marriage, family, and community is Opera Night put to the test when he falls in love with another at artsPlace woman from his faith. June 15 The Opera in the 21st Century Banff Centre and artsPlace program is generously join forces to present Opera supported by the David Night. Experience Canada’s Spencer Endowment next great opera singers and Encouragement Fund. instrumentalists present chamber music from the 20th and 21st Century. This is your chance to hear them before they take over the world’s opera and concert stages. PHOTO CREDIT: JESSICA WITTMAN (#OPERAPUB, 2018) (#OPERAPUB, WITTMAN JESSICA CREDIT: PHOTO Photo by Chris Amat. by Photo

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 53 Literary Arts Events Open Readings Susan Orlean Multiple dates. in Conversation Visit banffcentre.ca for more details. July 9 + 17 + 24 All summer, join faculty and Join Rogers Communications participants from Literary Chair Susan Orlean in Arts programs for a night of conversation with American reading from their works in writer Rebecca Skloot on progress. Featuring authors, July 17, and Pulitzer Prize journalists, and translators recipient and staff writer from the Writing Studio, for the New Yorker William Banff International Literary Finnegan on July 24. Translation Centre, Literary Also join us at Communitea Journalism, Summer Writers in Canmore on July 9 Retreat, and Autobiography to discuss everything and Fiction with Electric non-fiction with Susan Literature programs. Orlean, Carol Shaben, and Michael Harris. 2019 Distinguished Dionne Brand, Author in Autobiography Conversation and Fiction Guest Speaker about Writing August 20 and Translation Join critically-acclaimed poet June 13 and novelist Dionne Brand Join Banff International for a night of reflection on Literary Translation Centre’s autobiography and memoir Distinguished Author for in contemporary writing. a dynamic conversation about contemporary Visual Arts Events writing and translation. Visual Arts Open Lecture Series Studios Multiple dates. July 3 + August 21 Visit banffcentre.ca At the end of each residency, How to buy tickets to find out the schedule participants in Visual Arts and featured speakers. programs open their studio Click. The Visual Arts Lecture doors to share the artistic banffcentre.ca/events Series presents free research and artwork talks by leading Canadian created, as well as the and international artists, pertinent conversations Call. curators, and academics. generated in the program. 1.403.762.6301 or 1.800.413.8368 Whether you are an artist, an art appreciator, or a curious first time viewer, all Visit. are encouraged to attend. Banff Centre Box Office Eric Harvie Theatre Lobby Tuesday – Saturday 12 – 5 p.m.

banffcentre.ca 2019) WINTER STUDIOS, (OPEN MCKAY NAHANNI CREDIT: PHOTO

banffcentre.ca WHAT’S ON AT BANFF CENTRE WALTER PHILLIPS GALLERY

Guidelines The Amended Artist’s Carmen Papalia with Heather Kai Smith Reserved Rights Transfer Walter Phillips Gallery Main Space and Sale Agreement June 15 — August 25 Shevaun Wright Opening Reception: Friday, June 14 Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, First Floor Since 2015, Vancouver based-artist Carmen Papalia’s June 15 — August 25 practice has been grounded in the conceptual framework Opening Reception: Friday, June 14 he terms “Open Access”. This set of five tenants draws on Papalia’s experience as a non-visual learner, a term he In this new body of work, Los Angeles-based artist and chooses to identify with over the medicalizing terminology lawyer Shevaun Wright presents an edited version of of “blind” or “visually impaired”. Emphasizing what he ‘The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement,’ understands as an institution’s social accessibility, the a legal document and artwork by American conceptual framework of Open Access advocates for the artist’s artist Seth Siegelaub and lawyer Robert Projansky from understanding of “accessibility as social practice” – a 1971. An important touchpoint for ensuing conver- temporary experience that requires a relational approach sations on art and law, Wright’s edited version raises to mutual care. For this exhibition, Papalia is collaborating questions around the ethical implications of collecting with Heather Kai Smith on an animation and series of and racial underpinnings of contemporary art. works on paper which visually interpret the concept.

Free and open to all Walter Phillips Gallery is exclusively committed to WORK PICTURED ABOVE: Wednesday — Sunday the production, presentation, collection, and analysis Heather Kai Smith, Open Access: Claiming Visibility (2019), 12:30 — 5 p.m. of contemporary art and curatorial practice. 14” x 22“, pastel on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 55 Oct 26 – Nov 3 2019

Don’t miss nine epic days filled with stories of record-breaking ascents, remote journeys, and ground-breaking expeditions told by authors, photographers, filmmakers, and adventurers from around the globe.

Tickets on sale August 1 banffmountainfestival.ca

Don’t miss: A Night at the Festival Award-winning mountain films. The last Thursday of every month until September 26. Tickets: Lux Cinema Banff 229 Bear Street. luxbanff.com .

The Dawn Wall The Dawn Image from the film from Image MASTHEAD

InStudio BANFF CENTRE SENIOR MAGAZINE TEAM LEADERSHIP TEAM Banff Centre is Editor Janice Price Devon Murphy President & CEO reimagining Events Editor Bruce Byford Marie-Hélène Dagenais Vice President, what’s possible. Administration & CFO Graphic Designer Shannon Fidler Michael Code Vice President, Step into your potential. Banff Centre Design Team Operations Christine Majer (Lead) Register today for fall Martha de Santiago Howard R. Jang Leadership programs. Michelle Nugent Vice President, Kelly Stauffer Arts & Leadership Editorial Practicum Sarah Nelems banffcentre.ca Nicole Manfredi Vice President, Development Ads and Promotions Ryan Prather Valerie Kapay Vice President, Contributors Human Resources Garvia Bailey Jacqueline Bell Rosemary Thompson Allison Comrie Vice President, Tatum Dooley​ Marketing and Sara King-Abadi Communications, Nicole Manfredi​ Board Relations Aliya Mazari Ryan McIntosh Kaija Pepper BANFF CENTRE Alison Tedford BOARD OF GOVERNORS Lynda Vang David T. Weyant, Q.C., ICD.D Erin Woods Chair Thanks to Janice Price Mark Black and John President & CEO Yolkowski of Paul D. Fleck Larry Fichtner Library and Archives Vice Chair Don Lee, Rita Taylor, Carolyn Campbell Jessica Wittman, Nahanni Eric S. Harvie McKay, and Abigaile Edwards Evaleen Jaager Roy of Photo Services Andy Kenins, ICD.D Afton Brazzoni Judith LaRocque, ICD.D Letha J. MacLachlan, Q.C. BANFF CENTRE Gay Mitchell, ICD.D FOUNDATION Raif Richardson BOARD OF DIRECTORS Patricia Ruby Tim Kitchen, ICD.D John Snow P.M.L.M, M.A. Chair Gavin Berger Delia Cristea Andy Kenins, ICD.D Susan P. Kololian J. Mark MacDonald, ICD.D Michael S. H. McMillan, MBA, CMA, CPA Jackson von der Ohe Janice Price (ex-officio) Jill Price

David T. Weyant, Q.C., ICD.D Leading by Design. Photo by Jessica Wittman. (ex officio) New Heights IN MEMORIAM Honours, Nominations, and Milestones for Aldo Parisot Banff Centre Alumni and Community Internationally influential musician and cello instructor Aldo Parisot, who taught at Juilliard and Yale, and served as faculty for over 25 years at Banff Centre from 1981 to 2007, died on December 29, 2019.

“Mr. Parisot had an ability to bring out the expressive potential of the countless young musicians he worked with at Banff Centre. It is really Lou Sheppard impossible to exaggerate the enormity of his positive influence on the music VISUAL ARTS programs at Banff Centre. His idea of potential knew Visual artist Charlotte Banff Centre Visual Arts the inaugural recipients no boundaries, and his Prodger, who took part in alumni Lou Sheppard, of The Sobey Art Award belief in the ability of young a residency in 2016, was Krista Belle Stewart, and Residencies Program, a new people was a constant awarded the 2018 Turner the collaborative creative initiative from The Sobey source of inspiration.” Prize for her work in video. team and Art Foundation and the Amy Lam Jon Barry Shiffman, director of were chosen as National Gallery of Canada. McCurley Banff International String Quartet Competition

LITERARY ARTS Selena James Author and adventurer Thien. More than 50 Banff Alberta-born opera singer Kate Harris’s first book Centre literary alumni and renowned music Lands of Lost Borders: attended the event in educator Selena James Out of Bounds on the Silk celebration of new work died on January 25, 2019. Road won the 2019 RBC that was produced over She served as faculty in Taylor Prize for literary a residency at Banff Banff Centre’s Opera and non-fiction. Harris has Centre, with generous Musical Theatre programs taken part in multiple support from Barbara for 20 years, between 1996 Banff Centre programs, and Walter McCormick. and 2006. At Banff Centre’s including Mountain and 75th Anniversary celebration Wilderness Writing, where Literary alumna Paige she was honoured on she began writing her book. Cooper’s collection stage — along with Mary of fiction Zolitude Morrison — as one of the Banff Centre literary alumni was longlisted for the major influencers and Trevor Corkum, Ashok Scotiabank Giller Prize builders of Banff Centre’s Mathur, Moez Surani, and and was a finalist for Opera programs. Her many Matthew J. Trafford read the Governor General’s students over the decades at the Toronto launch of Literary Award for English included Richard Margison Fables in the 21st Century, language fiction. Cooper and Benjamin Butterfield. an anthology of new writing grew up in Banff and has edited by Rawi Hage, Lisa taken part in multiple Kate Harris Moore, and Madeleine Literary Arts residencies.

banffcentre.ca ALUMNI NEWS

Jeremy Dutcher

THEATRE & PERFORMING ARTS

Jordan Tannahill, multi- Jean Grand-Maître, who award-winning playwright first came to Banff Centre and Banff Centre alumnus of as a young dance student, the Playwrights Lab and the received the Order of Banff International Literary Canada. Grand-Maître is Translation Institute was artistic director for Alberta the 2018 recipient of the Ballet and returns to Banff Governor General’s Literary Centre this summer for Award for English-language a Dance residency. Drama for his one-act plays Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom.

MUSIC

Musician and Banff Centre Rolston String Quartet, music alumnus Jeremy winners of the 2016 Banff Dutcher won the 2018 International String Quartet Polaris Music Prize for Competition, had its his album Wolastoqiyik debut at Carnegie Hall. Lintuwakonawa and the 2019 Juno for Indigenous Canadian violinist and Laila Biali Music Album of the year. Banff Centre alumnus Dutcher is a Wolastoqiyik Timothy Chooi won the member of the Tobique First triennial Joseph Joachim Congratulations to all Barbara Hannigan, winner Nation in New Brunswick, International Violin Banff Centre alumni and for Classical Album of took part in a Banff Centre Competition Hannover; faculty who received 2019 the Year: Vocal or Choral. Music residency in 2016, he was the only Canadian Juno Awards, including: Hannigan has participated and was faculty for the violinist accepted into in multiple Banff Centre 2019 Canadian Indigenous the competition. Laila Biali, winner of Vocal music programs. Classical Music Gathering. Jazz Album of the Year. Biali Simon Lasky’s composition participated in the 2003 Ana Sokolovic, winner of Violinist Alice Lee was one “Close To Ecstasy” won Banff International Workshop Classical Composition of the of three finalists in Vienna the 2018 British Composer in Jazz and Creative Music, Year. Sokolovic participated at the International Fritz Awards in the category of and a Leighton Studio in music programs at Banff Kreisler Competition. She Jazz Composition for Small residency in January 2019. Centre in 2012, and was was the only Canadian in Ensemble. Lasky composed commissioned by the the finals and the youngest the piece during a Banff Gryphon Trio, winner of Banff International String to compete. Lee was a Centre Music residency. Classical Album of the Quartet Competition. participant in Banff Centre’s Year: Solo or Chamber, and Violin Master Classes and Classical Album of the Year: Shawn Everett, winner of was presented as a young Large Ensemble. Gryphon Recording Engineer of the artist at the inaugural Trio are alumni of Banff Year. Everett is an audio Banff International String Centre Music programs and practicum alumnus of Quartet Festival. incoming co-directors of Banff Centre and served Summer Music Programs. as audio faculty for the Indie Music Residency

PHOTO CREDITS: CHELSEA YANG-SMITH (SHEPPARD), KARI MEDIG (HARRIS), MATT BARNES (DUTCHER), COURTESY OF THE ARTIST (BIALI) ARTIST THE OF COURTESY (DUTCHER), BARNES MATT (HARRIS), MEDIG KARI (SHEPPARD), YANG-SMITH CHELSEA CREDITS: PHOTO for a number of years.

Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 59 Banff Centre Supporters Thank you to all our generous 2019/20 supporters. Government Banff Centre is grateful for the funding from the Government of Alberta through Alberta Advanced Education, Alberta Infrastructure, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Arts programs are also supported by funding from the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Arts Training Fund, and the Canada Arts Presentation Fund.

Major Leadership Supporters Banff Centre celebrates and deeply appreciates the commitment to developing leadership capacity across Canada, demonstrated by the following generous $25,000+ donors and sponsors who provide key programming and access funding. This work is developed with support from the Peter Lougheed Leadership Initiative, in partnership with the University of Alberta, made possible by funding from the Government of Alberta.

Visionaries Founding

The Lougheed Family John and Bunny* Ferguson

Access and Travel

The Globe and Mail Anonymous and Thomson Reuters

Imperial

Media Partners

banffcentre.ca SUPPORTERS Major Arts Supporters Banff Centre gratefully acknowledges the following $25,000+ major arts donors and sponsors. Their generosity provides emerging and established artists with access to our creative programming and to inspiring mentorship from our leading faculty.

Artists’ Fund

Pat and Connie Carlson

Jane and Michael Evans

Brent Mclean and John and Sheilagh Langille Sheila Wappel-Mclean

Kim and Jeff van Steenbergen

Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival

Banff International Literary Banff International String Quartet Competition Translation Centre

Power Corporation Ernie and Sandra Green Estate of Adam S. Hedinger of Canada

Banff International Workshop Indigenous Arts Community Outreach Emerging Artist Award in Jazz and Creative Music

Scotiabank

Literary Arts and Music Programs Official Airport Shuttle Official Beer and Cider Supplier, Visual Arts Emerging Shaw Amphitheatre Artists Program

Ernie and Sandra Green Jarislowsky Foundation

* Deceased Banff Centre endowments are listed on the following page. Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 61 2017/18 Supporters

In recognition of supporters who contributed $10,000+ to Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018.

Amounts represent actual cash and in-kind funds received and do not include pledge amounts committed that are receivable in future years. In addition to the names listed, Banff Centre expresses appreciation to the many others who have supported arts and leadership.

The 1988 Foundation c/o Lotte and Carter-Ryan Gallery Jarislowsky Fraser Partners Osprey Packs John Hecht Memorial Foundation Foundation CBN Commercial Solutions Parkland Fuel Corporation Aimia J. Vair Anderson Jewellers Chevron Canada Limited PETZL Alpine Club of Canada Kicking Horse Coffee Company Clif Bar and Company Power Corporation of Canada Don and Laura Althoff Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine Coast Mountain Sports Bryan Price and Christine Choi The Alvin and Mona Libin Foundation John R. Lacey Coca-Cola Refreshments Janice Price and Ian Findlay Amazon Canada Company Lake Louise Ski Resort and Rab Summer Gondola Christine and David Anderson ConocoPhillips Canada Gordon and Jill Rawlinson John and Sheilagh Langille Christine Armstrong and Irfhan Rawji David Cooke RBC Royal Bank Nancy Lever and Alex Pochmursky Azimuth Capital Management Vito Culmone Robyn and Gord Ritchie Jens Lindemann, C.M. The Azrieli Foundation Edna and Richard Cushman Seven Generations Energy Ltd. Loch Gallery Banff Airporter Inc. David Spencer Endowment Shell Canada Limited Encouragement Fund Jamie and Brenda Mackie Banff and Lake Louise Tourism Rick and Brune Sinneave Deuter Maclab Development Group Banff Canmore Community Maclab Properties Group Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust Foundation Edmonton Community Foundation Letha J. MacLachlan, Q.C. The Slaight Family Foundation Bruce and Carol Bentley Evenko Foundation and John Ridge Marg and Ron* Southern Big Rock Brewery Jan and Larry Fichtner In Honour of Amelia Madro Rosetta* and Mario* Stella Bird Construction and Flair Foundation Mammut Company Limited Suncor Energy Foundation Margaret and Jim Fleck Masters Gallery Ltd. Blake, Cassels and Graydon LLP TD Bank Group Chris and Mary Fong Mawer Investment Management BMO Financial Group Thomson Reuters George Family Fund at Jeff and Marilyn McCaig Boréale Explorers Gift Funds Canada TransAlta Brent McLean and Sheila Bow Valley Power The Globe and Mail Shirley and Greg Turnbull Wappel-McLean Jeff Boyd Sandra and Ernie Green Kim and Jeff van Steenbergen MEC BP Canada Energy Group ULC Harrison McCain Foundation The Walrus Rick Miller Buck Braund Dick and Lois Haskayne David T. Weyant Q.C., ICD.D Gay Mitchell and Archie McIntosh and Charlene Anderson Andrea Brussa Estate of Adam S. Hedinger Mountain Galleries at the Fairmont In honour of R.S. Williams Buff Hnatyshyn Foundation Mountain House and Sons Company The Camera Store Rebecca Hotchkiss and Harley Nikon Canada World Expeditions Hotchkiss* and The Hotchkiss Canada House Gallery Family Foundation The North Face Yeti Coolers Canadian Natural Resources Limited Husky Energy Inc. Oboz Footwear Anonymous (4) Pat and Connie Carlson Investors Group OneWest Event Design Banff Centre Endowments

Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is grateful to its generous donors who, recognizing the need for sustainable funding sources, have created endowments — the earnings from which provide ongoing support for artists and leaders at Banff Centre.

60th Anniversary of Dance Endowment Alice and Betty Schultz Anjulin Endowment Banff School of Advanced 75th Anniversary of Banff Centre Scholarships Endowment Fund Annie Romanchuk Endowment Management Endowment Endowment Fund Allard Foundation Endowed Arnold Spohr Distinguished Guest Barbara and John Poole Endowment Aboriginal Women’s Voices Scholarship Fund for Artist Endowment for Dance Barbara Gyurka Award for Endowment Nonprofit Leaders Art Work Acquistions Endowment Technical Achievement Ada Bronstein Endowment Fund Amanda Fryk Skarin Asper Endowment Barbara Spohr Memorial Endowment Adele Wiseman Endowment Memorial Endowment Audrey E. Klinck Scholarship Fund Benediktson Fellowship Fund Alan and Christene Murdock Andrea Brussa Master Artist Aurora Fund for Icelandic Artists Endowment for Dancers Endowment Fund Bakstad Stone Family Endowment Benediktson Fellowship Fund Alan Hooper Memorial Endowment Andres Segovia Memorial Endowment Banff Centre General Endowment for Mexican Artists Alathea and Herbert Manley Andrew David Shapiro Banff Centre Staff Endowment Bess Winspear Memorial Endowment Endowment Memorial Endowment Banff Churches Endowment Betty Farrally Memorial Endowment

banffcentre.ca SUPPORTERS

Bliss Carman Award Endowment Frederick Louis Crosby Leighton Studios Facility Renewal PricewaterhouseCoopers Bobbye Ruth and Dewitt L. Potter Memorial Endowment Fund Endowment Endowment for Not- Endowment Fund for Freeze Family Career Development Lenora P. Masters Endowment for-Profit Leaders Dance Scholarship Program Fund, BISQC Linda and Richard Singleton Publishing Workshop Endowment Bobbye Ruth and Dewitt L. Potter Freeze Family Instrument Fund Endowment Fund Quebecor Media Endowment Library Endowment Fund Frelyn Memorial Endowment Liz Crockford Artists Fund R.S. Williams & Sons Company Ltd. Boris Roubakine Memorial Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Lockwood Family Endowment Banff International String Endowment Outstanding Artist Program Fund for Music Quartet Competition Fund Brenda and Jamie Mackie Endowed Gay Mitchell and Archie McIntosh Louis and Gertrude Crosby Raul Urtasun - Frances Harley Fellowships for Visual Artists Creation Endowment Fund Family Endowment Scholarship for Artists Bruce McKinnon Memorial George Brough Memorial Endowment Louis Muhlstock Endowment from Argentina Endowment George Ryga Playwriting Lucy and Stephen Maxym Repsol Emerging Artists Canadian Pacific Hotels Endowment Scholarship Endowment Endowment Scholarship Fund Carlyle Norman Scholarship Gertrude and Ernest E. Poole Mackie Family Creation Repsol Master Artists Endowment for Emerging Literary Endowment Fund Endowment Richard and Sidney Killmer Artists Endowment Gladys and Merrill Muttart Maclab Enterprises Endowment Fund Oboe Endowment Fund Carlyle Norman Scholarship for Foundation Endowment Macquarie Group Foundation Robert L. Jamison Endowment Mountain and Wilderness Writers Greg Rudel/Andrew Shepherd Endowment for Not-for-Profit Rogers Communications Carolyn Tavender Endowment Memorial Endowment Leadership Chair in Literary Journalism Catharine Whyte Memorial Gwen Hadley Scholarship in Marek Jablonski Piano Endowment Endowment Fund Endowment Literary Arts Endowment Margaret (Peggie) Sampson Rosetta and Mario Stella Endowment CIBC Emerging Artists Harold Crabtree Foundation Memorial Endowment Rousseau et Vermette Endowment Scholarships Endowment Endowment Maria Francisca Josepha Brouwer Ruby Mercer Opera Award Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award Harold Douglas Brown Endowment Scholarship Fund for Ruth and Wes Van Dusen Endowment Colleen Anderson Millard Visual Helen B. Schlosser Endowment Dutch Musicians Sandra Faye Guberman Endowment Art Endowment Fund Helen Macfarlane Allison Marjorie and Neil Armstrong Schlosser/Alton/Peacocke Creation Fund Endowment Endowment Endowment Endowment CUPE Local 4318 Scholarship Fund Herb and Ivy Paris Endowment Marnie Warrack Memorial Sir Jack Lyons Scholarship for the Arts Cyril and Elizabeth Challice Fund Ian S. Lee Memorial Endowment Endowment Sir Mark Turner Memorial for Musicians IBM Theatre Crafts Endowment Marshall M. Williams Endowment Scholarships Endowment Cyril and Elizabeth Challice Teaching Ilona Diener Memorial Fellowship Mary and Chris Fong Sonia de Grandmaison Endowment Fellowship Fund for Music Fund Endowment Family Endowment Stuart Olson Endowment Cyril and Mary Paris Endowment Institute of Canadian Bankers Mary E. Hofstetter Legacy Fund Sunwapta Broadcasting Limited Darwall Endowment Endowment for Excellence in the Visual Arts Endowment David and Peggy Leighton Isobel and Tom Rolston Fellowships Mary Mooney Memorial Endowment Susan Agar Memorial Endowment Endowment in Music Endowment Maxine and Jack Weber Endowment Susan and Graeme McDonald David Spencer Emerging Vocalists Jay Macpherson Literary Michael and Sonja Koerner Endowment Music Endowment Endowment Fund Arts Endowment Michael Davies Scholarship Susan Glass and Arni Thorsteinson Denis Jackson Memorial Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Endowment Fund Fund for Dancers Endowment Scholarship Endowment Endowment Morna Davies Memorial Endowment Susan Siversky Memorial Endowment Devon Canada Scholarship Jeannie McWhinnie Endowment Fund Muriel Jolliffe Endowment for Dance Sylvia and Jack Chetner Endowment Endowment for Indigenous Jeff and Kim van Steenbergen Artist Myra Paperny Endowment for T.C. Hargrave Scholarship Leaders and Managers Scholarship Endowment Fund Emerging Alberta Writers in Voice Endowment Donald and Stella Cameron Jenny Belzberg Endowment Niki Goldschmidt Fund for Tevie and Arliss Miller Endowment Memorial Endowment Jim Dinning and Evelyn Main Endowed Composers Endowment Toshimi and William Sembo Doris Elizabeth Yanda Endowment Scholarship for Visual Artists Nonprofit Leadership Masterclass Artist Endowment Dorothy Cranstone Endowment John Labatt Limited Endowment Scholarship Fund Trina McQueen Endowment Dr. William A. Cochrane Endowment John Linn Memorial Endowment Nova Corporation Endowment Fund for Film and Media Eagles Nest BISQC Young John W. Kieley Endowment OK Gift Shop Endowment Vladimir & Yachiyo Wolodarsky Artists Endowment Fund for Emerging Musicians Ontario Artists Fund Endowment Fund for Eaton Foundation Endowment Fund Joseph F. Smith Memorial Patricia Clifford Scholarship Literary Arts & Music Edith Marion Ramsay Endowment Endowment Fund W.O. Mitchell Endowment Memorial Endowment Joyce and David Keith Scholarship Paul and Gerri Charette Endowment Walter and Estelle Painter Endowment Edwards Family Fund for the Arts Bursary Fund William and Nona Heaslip Endowment Eileen Higgin Calgary Theatre Joyce Carlyle Memorial Scholarship Paul D. Fleck Fellowships in for Archives for Performing Arts Singers Endowment in the Crafts Endowment the Arts Endowment William T. Wylie Endowment Eldon & Anne Foote Fund for Cultural Keith Evans Scholarship in Peter and Sheila Bentley Distinguished William Townsend Memorial and Environmental Leaders Visual Arts Endowment Guest Artist Endowment Fund Endowment EPCOR Scholarship Endowment Ken and Marie Madsen Peter Lougheed Leadership Wizan Film Properties Inc.Endowment for Not-for-Profit Leaders Endowment Scholarships Institute Endowment Yolande Freeze Master Artists Evelyn Wood Memorial Endowment Ken McVey Memorial Endowment Peter MacKendrick Endowment in Music Fund Finch Chamber Music Kelly S. Thompson Fund for Visual Artists Scholarship Fund Scholarship Endowment Pitblado Family Scholarship Fiona Mee Foundation Endowment Laszlo L. Funtek Endowment for Dance Endowment

* Deceased Supporter logos and lists throughout publication are current at time of printing. Spring /Summer 2019 InStudio 63 LAST WORD

THE CANADIAN INDIE POP BAND ALVVAYS are Get tickets to see Alvvays July 13 in the self-described “Antisocialites.” After receiving Shaw Amphitheatre at banffcentre.ca widespread praise for their 2017 album of the same name, the band continues to navigate fame with a modesty reflective of their Maritime roots. Alvvays joins Banff Centre this July to play an outdoor concert as part of Mountainside Summer Shows. We spoke to songwriter and frontwoman Molly Rankin about the importance of seeking out creative spaces that allow the idle mind to be loud. Q Where do you usually do your best writing? A I’ve tried a couple of different places. Sometimes I rent a little place in the woods or on a beach to get away from city distractions and my friends. But I also have a little space in my apartment where I can escape. I’ve filled it up with things that inspire me. It’s a comfortable space for me to make noise. Q You wrote most of your sophomore album on Toronto Island in an abandoned schoolhouse. Why that space? A After travelling for a long period of time [on tour], I definitely needed a little bit of time away to become inspired again. I stayed in a huge, portable classroom with a big chalkboard [...] right off of the lake. I’d put on my favourite records and go for a bike ride through the woods. It’s just not something that can be done in Toronto. I don’t even really walk with headphones at night in the city. It is really nice to block everything out. Be a part of nature. That was a big part of my upbringing — just being in the woods. Q Is that form of isolation important for your creative process? A It’s really good for me to be bored. If you hunker down and really have nothing to do but think of ideas and focus then it can be really helpful. I usually have to go outside of my own experience in order to write about exciting things that feel passionate because everyday life can be pretty mundane. Not that there isn’t value in writing about that but for me, I like to view things as short stories My Studio or characters and create my own little universe in songs. That’s a fun way for me to experience other lives, living vicariously through songs. We step inside the studios of Q You’ve also lived out many lifestyles: you’re from P.E.I., you moved to Toronto and some of our favourite artists and go on tour for extended periods of time. Is there anything you take with you from place thinkers to see where they create to place that makes you feel grounded? their best work BY NICOLE MANFREDI A Usually I put Christmas lights in any space that I intend to spend time in. It just keeps my mood up. Recently, I put an old map of North America up in the practice space and put a pin Official Beer and Cider Supplier everywhere we’ve been. I think you have to be of the Shaw Amphitheatre so adaptable. We usually just bring one pair of pants on a one-month tour. You learn how to live very light when you’re constantly in transit. PHOTO CREDIT: ARDEN WRAY ARDEN CREDIT: PHOTO

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