ELORA – This year’s Elora Festival will honour the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday.
“He was born in 1770 and 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of his birth and I think that’s a big event around the world musically,” said Mark Vuorinen, festival artistic director.
“I think a lot of orchestras and musical organizations are programming around that.
“So I think it’s a good sort of landmark to acknowledge and so there are a number of different programs through the festival that will give opportunities to our audience to hear his music.”
This year’s festival will take place from July 10 to 26 in Elora at the Gambrel Barn, St. John’s Anglican Church and the Elora Centre for the Arts.
The Elora Festival will kick off on July 10 with an opening night gala presenting Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.
“That’s an absolutely monumental work,” Vuorinen said.
“It is one of the crowning achievements I think of his life and so it will be a great way I think to open our festival.”
However, the artistic director also points out the Elora Singers, the ensemble in residence, will be central throughout the different programs included in the festival.
The Elora Singers will once again be performing an immersive experience performance, which was introduced last year.
Entitled Light Revealed the Elora Singers will present the experiential show on July 23 at the Gambrel Barn.
“This one will have the choir moving around the audience singing sort of surrounding the audience at times, singing in small ensembles in different parts of the barn,” Vuorinen said.
“It’s meant to sort of engage not only the ears but also the eyes and the sort of whole experience of being immersed in sound.”
The Elora Singers will perform on their own as well as in collaborations with some of the festival’s guest artists including: Canadian Brass, singer Royal Wood, Indian-North American fusion group Autorickshaw.
“That was really intentional putting these kinds of collaborations together that show the breadth and the depth of what the Elora Singers are capable of doing,” Vuorinen said.
Another collaboration will include the participants from the new Elora Singers Vocal Academy.
The new initiative will offer a summer program to young professional singers that will complement their university or conservatory education.
“Almost exclusively [other programs] are geared towards training singers to be solo singers in opera or on the stage or to do recitals,” Vuorinen said.
“None of them that I can find focus on showing singers, young emerging professional singers that being an ensemble singer, is a really great way of earning a living and making a career for yourself.”
And that’s just the aim of the Elora Singers Vocal Academy. Interested students can complete an application and after an audition four to six artist will be chosen.
“They will come to Elora for a four day kind of intensive period of working with some of our guest artists including Lawrence Wiliford and Brett Polagato who are kind of our faculty members,” Vuorinen said. “There’ll be masterclasses, they’ll be coached in individual lessons, they will be singing as members of the Elora Singers in one of our programs and they’ll be given the opportunity to have a showcase concert.”
At the concert the students will have the opportunity to sing as a soloist and in small and large ensembles.
“It takes a different kind of training and a different kind of skill then other programs do so I think that will be a really great addition to our program this year,” he said.
For more information about the vocal academy email laura.adlers@elorasingers.ca.
For a full list of performances and to purchase tickets visit www.elorafestival.ca. Tickets can also be purchased by calling the box office at 519-846-0331 or in person at the Elora Festival office: The Elora Centre for the Arts, 75 Melville Street, Elora, ON N0B 1S0.
