Media Release

---

For immediate release
April 27, 2006

2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival turns a spotlight on innovative new work and rediscovered favourites

With four months of performances and exhibitions waiting in the wings, The Banff Centre is set to launch its annual Summer Arts Festival, a showcase of some of the best artistic work being done in this province, in Canada, and in the world. The Festival is a sparkling mix of new creative work and rediscovered favourites in all artistic disciplines including ballet, opera, orchestral and chamber music, jazz, fiction and non-fiction readings, adventure film screenings, new media installations, and visual arts, the biggest cultural event in the Canadian Rockies this summer.

Highlights for summer 2006 include a Latin-infused jazz concert by Cuban pianist and bandleader Chucho Valdés, an investigation into the dark heart of Canadian comic book culture in the Walter Phillips Gallery, and a sultry new cabaret show by Toronto-based singer-actress Patricia O’Callaghan.

In celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday, the Festival offers his funniest and most poignantly human opera, The Magic Flute, plus numerous chamber music and orchestra concerts, featuring the full span of music’s most memorable genius.

Audiences will also catch a one-night-only reading by Pulitzer and PEN/Hemingway Award-winner Edward P. Jones, new work in dance by choreographers Wen Wei Wang, Gaetan Gingras, and Simone Orlando, a world premiere of an innovative musical work by celebrated trumpeter Jens Lindemann, a street-savvy, interactive performance art piece by U.K.-based collective Blast Theory, and a tour-de-force of solo Shakespeare by actor Raoul Bhaneja.

“Our summer Arts Festival is a thrilling opportunity for The Banff Centre to share the thoughts, emotions, and vision of today’s and tomorrow’s creative masters,” says John Murrell, producer of the Banff Summer Arts Festival, “a chance for us to display our extraordinary depth and diversity.”

The Festival features hundreds of professional artists, both emerging and mid-career, and is made possible in part by the generous support of RBC as presenting sponsor. RBC’s six-year commitment to The Banff Centre supports the RBC Youth Excellence Scholarships program, which brings young performers in music, dance, and opera to the Centre from across Canada.

Many of the established artists performing in this summer’s Festival have had significant career milestones at The Banff Centre, and are now returning with accomplished work and companies of their own. They include choreographers Wen Wei Wang and Gaetan Gingras, previous winners of the Centre’s Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award, O’Callaghan, who was one of the headliners in the 2004 Festival’s highly acclaimed premiere of Constantinople, jazz greats like trumpeter Dave Douglas and percussionist Clarence Penn, and standout director and playwright Sandra Laronde, who returns to the Centre with her company Red Sky Performance and their new work, Shimmer.

As part of the 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival, The Banff Centre continues its successful Arts Lover program for audiences. Arts Lover Passes are $85 each, and allow the passholder free entry into most Arts Festival events. Purchase passes or individual event tickets by calling the Box Office at 1-800-413-8368 or (403) 762-6301, box_office@banffcentre.ca.

— 30 —

Complete schedule of 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival events.

Downloadable, print-ready photos of Banff Summer Arts Festival events.