Main Photo: (From back left) Huntsville Festival of the Arts general manager Rob Saunders, with directors Suzanne Riverin, Karen Cassian, Helena Renwick, Cheryl Stamper, Steve Campbell, Sharon Marks, Will Gibson, Barry Hayward, Carol Stueck; (front from left) Carol Gibson, and June Salmon
The Canadian Brass started it all so it’s fitting that they would be the performance that officially opens the Huntsville Festival of the Arts’ 25th summer season.
The HFA got its start way back in 1993 when The Canadian Brass opened its first show at Deerhurst Resort. It hasn’t looked back, providing a diverse line-up of artists every year, some of whom will be joining the Festival again this year.
The opening evening will be marked by a gala celebration. At 7:45 in Civic Square in front of the Algonquin Theatre, Neil Barlow and two other trumpeters will play a fanfare he wrote for the occasion. Patrons will then take their seats for a one-minute video commissioned for the Festival’s 25th anniversary that will play before all shows this summer. Just prior to The Canadian Brass concert, the Festival will officially open with a cry from Bracebridge Town Crier Bruce Kruger and the reading of a poem, written by Festival board member June Salmon. The poem was also commissioned for the 25th anniversary and is dedicated to the memory of Kareen Burns.
The return of the Huntsville Festival Orchestra
Originally a classical and jazz festival, the HFA’s mainstay was the Huntsville Festival Orchestra directed by Kerry Stratton and comprising professional orchestra players from symphonies in Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe area. The orchestra played annually for the festival’s first 14 years, and the musicians were billeted locally while they played four or five concerts over a two-week span.
“We were the only summer festival I’m aware of that had a sort of resident orchestra,” says HFA general manager Rob Saunders. “Kerry was an important part of the festival for so many years.”
Conductor Kerry Stratton with the Huntsville Festival Orchestra
The festival is pleased that the Huntsville Festival Orchestra will be reprised under Stratton for two shows this season: Piaf Encore, a tribute to the music of Edith Piaf with Pandora Topp, and Last Night at the Proms, a wind-up celebration with some fun pomp and ceremony.
Honouring Stina Nyquist
The Huntsville Festival of the Arts will honour playwright Stina Nyquist with Tales from Muskoka. Nyquist was a former Festival board member and long-time supporter of the arts prior to her death in 2016.
Two plays based on Nyquist’s work – which painted a picture of life in Muskoka’s early days of settlement – will be presented on three evenings at one of her favourite venues, Muskoka Heritage Place.
Director Greg Perras opens the evening in the pioneer village’s church with Once Discovered an adaptation of Nyquist’s Ripples From The Bush and Letters From The Bush, which follows three contemporary women as they discover and share correspondence from their descendants. The women are played by Karen Thorn, Jane Morris and Diane Bickley.
The audience will then move to an outdoor location in the village for Up The Blasted Trail, an adaptation of Nyquist’s play of the same name, directed by Suzanne Riverin. The play provides a snapshot of the lives of six characters – played by Karen Thorn, Jane Morris, Terry Savory, Frank Berg, Shawn Marks and Lizzie Robinson – living through the reality of life in Muskoka during the mid-1880s.
Some favourite artists return
Rounding out the Festival’s summer season will be a variety of acts, many of them favourites from past years including Jesse Cook, Colin James, Natalie MacMaster & Donnell Leahy, Lighthouse, and Hawksley Workman.
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- Hawksley Workman
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- Jesse Cook
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- Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy
See the full Festival calendar here.
Huntsville Festival of the Arts toasts 25 years
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What a fabulous theatre group. My Mother Dorothy McCleary Lockhart and I loved the theatre and when visiting Huntsville would always contact Dr Winston Salmon my mother’s first cousin (their parents being siblings on the Salmon family tree). My grandfather Crawford McCleary and his wife Jennie Salmon first settled in the town in early 1900’s when Dorothy’s brother Kenneth Crawford McCleary was born in the house with the tin roof third on the left from Main St was born and stayed for a year when my grandfather opened another livery stable and moved to Haileybury where my mother was born. Moving north again to Iroquois Falls my grandfather went on to Abitib and lived there till Jennie my grandmother died in 1926. The sofistication in the small town turn of the century areas gives residents and cottages alike the home away from home appeals. Here’s to another 25 years.
Kathy Lockhart