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Rob Murray: The Banff Centre International String Quartet Festival is taking place September 1st – 5th. I’m speaking with Festival Director Barry Shiffman. The festival is going online this year due to COVID-19. Why was it important to continue this festival even though you couldn’t really do it the normal way?

Barry Shiffman: In a way it was more important to do it than at any other time. The idea of a festival is bringing people together and building community. With COVID, community is one of the things that’s being hit more than anything else, so it was a very clear decision.

It’s going to be quite similar to what happens in a regular festival year in that we’re going to have great performances by the greatest musicians that we’ve engaged. We’re going to have conversations that I’ll be leading with various people, and we’re going to even have two spectacular movies.

Now, we didn’t have the ability to record the great string quartets in the Rolston Recital Hall, but we did have the opportunity to engage Canada’s most celebrated pianist right now, Jan Lisiecki, who is an Alberta native that lives in Calgary. Usually he’s so busy performing concerts all over the world we can never get him, but this year, since COVID was happening, I called Jan and I said, “Jan, would you drive up to the Banff Centre and would you record a recital for us from the Rolston Recital Hall?” As it turns out, he was not only excited to do it, but it was his first performance in Canada post-COVID.

We have concerts happening from the Isabel Bader Theatre that we recorded, concerts happening from Merkin Hall in the Kauffman Center in New York City, from the Colburn School in Los Angeles, from an incredible loft in Brooklyn. We didn’t allow the idea of COVID stopping us.

RM: In addition to the nightly performances that people can tune in to, you mentioned some film screenings. What’s going to be shown?

BS: Two films. One of them is called Strings Attached, which was a documentary that was made on the Dover Quartet who were winners of one of our previous competitions. This documentary captures them winning the competition and their unbelievable career launch – within a year of winning the competition they were performing over a hundred concerts a year. Another film is called The Rolston Sessions. It’s basically a collection of conversations and music videos, if you will, of each of the 10 quartets that were competing in the 2013 competition. It’s a very touching portrait of what this art of string quartet is to all these remarkable young players.

RM: I remember when we chatted last year we spoke a little bit to the accessibility of the string quartet format, how for people who aren’t necessarily into classical music, this is a great entry point for them. Do you still feel that way?

BS: Absolutely, and I would say that the range of music being presented in the festival provides many possible access points. You can enter via the big romantic Dvorak quartet with a performance of the Viano String Quartet. If you’re looking for something more contemporary, the PUBLIQuartet sort of redefines what a string quartet is and brings in improvisation into their artistic practice, performs many composers’ works that may not be familiar, and brings other influences and genres into the art making. So I would say it’s an easy entrance point for all sorts of listeners. And if it’s not your cup of tea, that particular music that you’re listening to, the next piece probably is, or the next performance is, because there’s such an enormous range in that art form. I think we cover a lot of that in the five days of the festival.

RM: The bar is fairly low for viewership too because all concerts and events are free, aren’t they?

BS: Yeah. We gave a lot of thought to that. Should we put the festival behind a paywall? Our guiding principle again was about community, and because we were fortunate enough to have committed supporters and donors we were in this position where we could afford to capture the content and share it. Particularly at this time, we know how difficult it has been for not just artists, but for everybody. It just seemed this was not the time to focus on the revenue from a paywall. All of the musicians have been paid. That was important to us. All of the tech crews have been paid. That was important to us. We had our funding from our donors. Let the world enjoy this music. It really supports the mission of Banff Centre.

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