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The Future is Now: The New Music Festival

The WSO’s New Music Festival is truly an incredible undertaking with more than 50 pieces being performed in just 7 days.

What became the WSO’s most widely known activity had its roots in an idea that Bramwell Tovey brought with him to Winnipeg.

“I felt that I had no right to be artistic director of a Canadian orchestra unless I knew something about Canadian music,” he recalled in 2006. “The only composers I knew at all were Murray Schafer and Claude Vivier. In the Spring of 1989, before I officially started with the WSO, I spent several days at the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto, researching dozens of Canadian composers and getting a sense of what was going on in Canadian music. I came to think that we should launch ourselves at this as a project.”

“After I arrived in Winnipeg, Sid Robinovitch, Michael Matthews and Pat Carrabré took me to lunch at the East Side Exchange on behalf of the Manitoba’s Composer Association. Pat produced a score and a walkman and said, ‘Please listen to this.’ I said, ‘No, tomorrow I’m going to visit your office and listen to several hours of music.’ ”

“About six months later I had a conversation with the WSO’s executive director, Max Tapper. I said I would really like to try a new music festival. I thought that with the two universities and with the choirs and the energy that we had, and the fact that the WSO doesn’t do much in January, that it was something we should try.”

“I wanted to start it in 1991, but there was a big debate at a board meeting and we decided to postpone it a year. Then du Maurier Arts Ltd. Descended into Winnipeg and we went to the River Mandarin restaurant in Osbourne Village and I pitched the idea to them. They went for it, and it took off.”

The next big step was hiring a composer-in-residence.

Excerpt taken from: Don Anderson, Tuning The Forks: A Celebration of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
Altona; Friesens, 2007. p. 198 – 199.

Don Anderson’s book can be purchased at the WSO Box office for $39.99 (before tax).