Media Release

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For immediate release
June 30, 2006

Banff Centre invites locals and visitors for a full weekend of Festival premieres and previews

Taste of the Festival
July 7 to 9 — Various venues — The Banff Centre
Tickets and information: 403.762.6301 or 1.800.413.8368
Presented as part of the Banff Summer Arts Festival

Expanding from a one-night-only event into a weekend of festivities, The Banff Centre’s annual Taste of the Festival unfolds on July 7, 8, and 9. Audiences will be able to take in a full menu of arts events, including selections from Mozart’s chamber and opera works, mountain film screenings, Aboriginal dance, ballet, Gallery tours, cabaret, and the world premiere of Jens Lindemann’s new co-production with The Banff Centre, Brassfire. Audience members are also invited to attend one of two on-site barbecues, included with the price of a Taste ticket, on the evening of Friday, July 7.

Highlights of the weekend include:

• Natural Magic, a premiere performance by cabaret singer Patricia O’Callaghan. Known to Banff Centre audiences as one of the powerful voices in the 2004 Banff Summer Arts Festival production Constantinople, O’Callaghan will perform three dates this year in the Centre’s intimate Club space.
• Two potpourris of Mozart works by participants and visiting musicians in the Centre’s Rolston Recital Hall. The first concert will feature selections from this summer’s Festival opera, The Magic Flute, and the second will be a line-up of popular chamber works by the master composer in honour of the 250th anniversary of his birth.
• Previews of two of the Banff Summer Arts Festival’s highly anticipated dance performances. Acclaimed dance group Red Sky Performance will present an excerpt from their new work Shimmer, currently being developed at the Centre. An ensemble piece for Canadian and Australian Aboriginal dancers, a version of Shimmer premiered at the 2006 Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa. Audiences can also sit in on rehearsal and discussion about this summer’s Festival Dance performance, a mix of classical and contemporary ballet which will feature a world premiere by Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award winner Simone Orlando.
• A photography field trip in and around The Banff Centre with award-winning Canmore-based landscape and travel photographer Richard Berry.
• A sneak preview of Frobisher, the new opera in development by composer John Estacio and librettist John Murrell. Sweeping back and forth between the past and the present, Alberta and the high Arctic, the opera will premiere in January 2007.
• The world premiere of Brassfire, a lively journey through 500 years of music evolution, featuring Jens Lindemann on trumpet, an 11-piece brass ensemble, and original staging and lighting design.

With another month and a half of Festival events left to unfold, from concerts to opera to exhibitions, this preview weekend will give audience members a stimulating taste of what’s to come.

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Dates, times, more information on Taste of the Festival weekend events

High-resolution, downloadable images from the 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival.