July brings the Vancouver Classical Guitar Festival back for its fifth year, complete with events, master classes, and workshops
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Vancouver Classical Guitar Festival 2024
When: July 11–14, 7:30 p.m.
Where: BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver
The Tempest Project
When: July 17–22, 7 p.m.
Where: Vancouver Playhouse, 600 Hamilton St.
For classical music fans, summer months are definitely not business as usual — not a bad thing, given unusual events like the Vancouver Classical Guitar Festival and Music on Main’s The Tempest Project.
Despite the overwhelming popularity of guitar in today’s music milieu, classical guitarists feature rather infrequently on the regular seasons of major Vancouver presenters. All the more important that July brings the Vancouver Classical Guitar Festival back for its fifth year, complete with events, master classes, and workshops at Capilano University in North Vancouver.
And, of course, concerts. On July 11 Dr. Jeffrey McFadden, chair of guitar studies at the University of Toronto, is joined by violinist Dr. Francisco Barradas and festival director Luis Angel Medina in a program highlighted by the premiere of Canadá: Tierra de ensueño (Canada: Land of dreams) by Mexican composer Julio Cesar Oliva.
On July 12 Cuban-Canadian guitarist Iliana Matos and Dr. Daniel Ramjattan perform. Matos will also offer a premiere, a work by colleague Jeffrey McFadden.
A more exotic proposition is Music on Main’s, The Tempest Project at the Vancouver Playhouse. This is no conventional concert, as smallish groups of listeners will be guided through spaces rarely seen by civilians at the Vancouver Playhouse, with stops along the way for musical vignettes inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Artistic producer Shayna Goldberg is full of enthusiasm about the project.
“We started working on it in September-October 2020, and our team came together in 2021,” Goldberg explained.
“The impetus of the project came from Music on Main’s artistic director David Pay, who said he wanted to do something on an epic scale. It’s an exciting theatre and musical production: essentially it’s a roving musical, where the audience will move through corridors and rooms and into some unexpected spaces. It’s difficult to describe because it offers musical experiences that can’t be expressed in words. Guides will take groups along different paths through the Playhouse, moving onto the stage, off of the stage, and into various nooks and crannies. There will be only 25 people per group, so we can accommodate only 120 people per performance.”
For originality alone, this promises to be something quite out of the ordinary. While classical music is the jumping off part of the extravaganza, there’s a whole lot more.
“There will be music throughout, often through hidden speakers, a mixture of live and recorded music, with some electronics.”
I commented that it sounded a bit like a high-art funhouse. and Goldberg didn’t entirely disagree. “The idea is for participants to experience a journey filled with wonder and magic.”
I assumed logistics must be a bit of a nightmare; Goldberg is taking it all in stride. “One of the things that I love is that my job is making sure everything needed to bring this alive is there.”
She adds: “125 people is a very limited capacity, but we really planned it out during meetings. One aspect I’m proud of is offering a Monday matinee, so that people who are busy in the other arts get a chance to attend.”