Media Release

For Immediate Release
June 30, 2004

Banff Summer Arts Festival 2004 inspired by the music of Mozart

Considering he only lived to the age of 35, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced an astonishing number of works. Beginning when he was six years old, to his death in 1791, he composed more than 600 pieces of music – and several of them are at the forefront of The Banff Centre’s 2004 Summer Arts Festival, which runs from July 9 to August 14.

It’s easy to see why John Murrell, the Centre’s artistic director of Theatre Arts, and coordinating producer of the Festival, was inspired by Mozart when he and his colleagues were putting together the 2004 program. “Listening to Mozart, I always wish that I possessed a little more of his tranquility, his humanity and clarity of purpose, as I go about my job every day,” he says. “Think about it – his job was making beauty and meaning.”

Mozart’s magic can be heard and seen this summer in dance, opera, and music, floating through orchestral performances, small ensemble works, and classic choreography. Mostly Mozart Sundays, a series of chamber music concerts in Banff’s historic St-Georges-in-the-Pines Church , will begin June 27 and continue through August 8, and will feature Arts Festival musicians playing a selection of the composer’s most popular works.

As part of the weekly series Fridays with Friends in the Rolston Recital Hall, The Banff Centre’s new artistic director for Music & Sound, David Hoyt, will conduct the Banff Festival Orchestra in a performance of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony on July 30, in a concert which also features the Juno Award-winning Gryphon Trio.

Opening July 14 and running for four performances, a group of Canada’s most promising young ballet dancers will perform George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, set to one of Mozart’s delicate and evocative works of light music. The piece will introduce an evening which also features Tam Ti Delam by choreographer (and artistic advisor to the Centre’s summer dance program) Brian Macdonald, and a new work, Configurations of the Body, by dynamic Toronto choreographer D.A. Hoskins.

And in August, emerging opera talents from across Canada will be featured in four performances of Mozart’s comic masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro. Full of revolutionary plot twists and romantic mayhem, this popular and accessible work makes a welcome return to the stage of the Eric Harvie Theatre August 11, 12, 13, and 14.

Tickets for the Banff Summer Arts Festival are available at The Banff Centre Box Office at 1-800-413-8368 or (403) 762-6301, or at box_office@banffcentre.ca.

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For a complete schedule of Banff Summer Arts Festival Events go to:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/bsaf/2004/default.asp

Click here for a print-ready, downloadable image of the Banff Summer Arts Festival:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/communications/images/bsaf_2004/

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