Brott Music Festival presents annual classical, jazz, chamber, pops, multidisciplinary, and education concerts in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The festival was founded by conductor Boris Brott in 1988. The orchestra in residence is the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, Canada's only professional orchestral training program.
The festival began as a way to provide cultural activity during the summer months in Hamilton, Ontario, and was founded as a two-week summer music festival in 1988 by conductor Boris Brott. Its budget has increased from $50,000 to under $1.5 million, and it has become Canada's largest orchestral music festival. It is praised in music circles for emphasizing nontraditional and multidisciplinary performances. Brott draws musicians from across Canada. The orchestra in residence is the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, which is a training program for aspiring professional musicians. The NAO is the only program of its kind in Canada and is similar to the Orchestra of the New World in Florida. Brott's main activities take place in June, July, and August annually, but the festival also presents educational concerts for elementary students at Hamilton Place every autumn and three performances of Handel's Messiah every December. BMF performs in concert hall settings such as Hamilton Place, Dofasco Centre for the Performing Arts, Mohawk College's McIntyre Theatre and the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. It also performs in churches, including Christ's Church Cathedral, Melrose United, St. Christopher's Anglican in Burlington, West Highland Baptist, and St. John's Anglican in Ancaster. Other venues include the Royal Botanical Gardens, Dundurn Castle, Whitehern Museum, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Boris Brott and educational programs
Boris Brott has been principal Education & Family Conductor at the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Music Director of New West Symphony in Los Angeles and the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal. He founded Brott Music Festival in 1988 and the National Academy Orchestra of Canada in 1989. The festival re-introduced music education performances to Hamilton in 1999. Since then, the NAO has performed for over 144,000 schoolchildren from across southern Ontario. It is estimated that Boris Brott has introduced classical music to one million children during his career. He has written over 300 scripted children's concerts, such as Welcome Bach, Meet Mr. Beethoven; Trick or Treat to a Wicked Beat; There's an Animal in My Orchestra; Boris the Explorer: So You Want to Sing?; and J.S. Bach Meets Glenn Gould. Brott Music Education Concert highlights over the past nine years have included:
The Sophia Diaries: A Musical Exploration of Canada in the 1840s
The Underground Railroad: A Musical Journey narrated by Hon. Lincoln Alexander
From Ghost Ships to Space Ships: Musical Explorations with astronaut Roberta Bondar
Music & The Inuit Spirit with throat singers, drum dancers, and soapstone carvers
Melodies & Myths: A celebration of Aboriginal Music featuring the world premiere of Barbara Croall's Mi'degaawen
The second category is for middle school grades 4-8 and is based on curriculum worked out with teachers and arts consultants on the BMF Education Committee. These programs can be based around the life of a composer and often feature an actor portraying Mozart, Beethoven, or Dvorak. Programming selections must contain excerpts of varying styles and colours representative of that particular composer. Programs inculcate contemporary Canadian composition since they illustrate the influence that specific composer may have had on another contemporary Canadian composer.
Timeline
1988 - Boris Brott founds the 11-day Boris Brott Summer Music Festival as a way to fill the void of cultural activity during the summer months in the Hamilton area. First Festival has five performances.
1989 - National Academy Orchestra inaugural season as official Orchestra of the BMF. NAO first supported by the Ministry of Labour. The NAO trains through the Mentor-Apprentice approach and its real-to-life rehearsal and performance schedules.
1997 - BMF gives first annual concert on front lawn at the newly restored Windermere House at Lake Rousseau, Ontario
1998 - Department of Canadian Heritage and Human Resources Canada fund the National Academy Orchestra as a National Arts Training School.
2000 - NAO and BMF garner national attention with appearances by former Prime Minister of CanadaKim Campbell who narrates a performance with her spouse, Broadway star Hershey Felder
2002 - NAO is invited to perform for an audience of 800,000 for Pope John Paul II at Downsview Grounds in Toronto, ON. This is a part of the Pope's visit to Toronto in July 2002 during World Youth Day celebrations.
2005 - World premiere of Barbara Croall's Midawewe' Igan - The Sound of the Drum".
2006 - Canada's first person in space, astronaut Marc Garneau guest stars in Music & Space. Members of the NAO and an actor portraying Mozart visit Holy Family Elementary School to say Happy 250th Anniversary to Mozart. Appearance is broadcast live on CH News At Noon.
2007 - 20th Anniversary celebration of BMF. Mahler's 8th Symphony of a Thousand is performed as 20th anniversary summer finale with an orchestra of 120, a choir of 250, eight soloists, The Brantford Children's Chorus, and eight off-stage brass. Over 30 of the 120 orchestral musicians were NAO alumni who returned from all over Canada to join in the celebration. Concert is sold out and receives a 6-minute standing ovation and five curtain calls. It was only the work's eighth performance in Canadian history and a first for Hamilton.
2008 - BMF continues its Gift of Music project with the Hamilton Spectator which sees it going into local long-term care facilities. Mohawk College becomes primary site for rehearsals and mainstage performances. World premieres of BMF-commissioned Dagwaagin by Barbara Croall and Omar Daniel's Alouette Variations: A Canadian Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. Thirteen-year-old piano prodigy Jan Lisiecki appears twice on BMF stages to great acclaim. BMF premieres its original script for Beethoven & The Bully, an education concert on December 2, 2008
Awards and honors
The festival received the Tourism Ambassador Award from Tourism Hamilton and Tourism Business of the Year. Boris Brott was awarded the Order of Ontario in 2006, Lifetime Achievement Awards from Tourism Hamilton and the City of Hamilton Arts Awards in 2007, and the National Child Day Award from the Canadian Institute for Child Health in Ottawa in November 2007. In May 2006, he was voted one of the top five Greatest Hamiltonians of all time by readers of The Hamilton Spectator.
