A new era of joy for Brott Music Festival
As Canada’s largest orchestral festival wraps up its first season under artistic director Tania Miller on Aug. 15 with a concert dedicated to Boris Brott, she shared her reflections with HAMILTON CITY Magazine about the legacy of Brott and her role in taking the festival into the future.
Tania Miller feels the late Boris Brott with her in everything she does as the artistic director of the Brott Music Festival that he began 37 years ago.
Miller assumed the role of artistic director last October and will soon wrap up her first season at the helm of the festival that showcases performances of the National Academy Orchestra of Canada and BrottOpera. Both are training opportunities for emerging professional musicians and vocalists.
Miller, who was conductor of the Victoria Symphony and is a frequent guest conductor in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, came into the Brott Music Festival role with a vision to broaden its audience and create more diverse experiences for musicians and spectators. She has focused on creating intimate and immersive events and that has paid off. Heading into its final four concerts, the festival enjoyed a 30 per cent increase in new audiences and a surge in attendance by students and those 35 and under.
Miller sees great potential in the Brott Musical Festival, which is Canada’s largest orchestral festival.
“First of all, I see the most incredible young orchestra filled with hopeful, really talented young people from all across Canada. So that's inspiring of its own accord. When we watch people aspire, we are inspired.”
She is building on the festival’s tradition of presenting a range of musical repertoire with a new focus on imaginative connections with audiences.
Her first concert of the season was Beethoven Immersive, which was held in the gorgeous and historic Church of the Ascension. Audience members sat among the musicians, moving to a new location – and a new experience of the music – with each of the four movements of Symphony No 3 (Eroica). The festival returned to the church with Max Richter’s Vivaldi: Four Seasons Recomposed, performing its first concert by candlelight.
Both concerts were followed by after parties at the Pheasant Plucker pub, when audiences were encouraged to come and hang out with the musicians. That’s not a typical classical concert-going experience, but that’s what Miller’s all about: challenging the status quo.
Opera performances – Barber of Seville and Bel Canto, a night of opera favourites – featured pre- and post-concert receptions, too, because Miller sees live music as an opportunity for connection, engagement and making memories. That often means the traditions of classical music needs some shaking up, says Miller.
The shared experience of music is transformative.
“It comes as a rush of understanding that, wow, this was something profound that changes me, changes how I feel about living. And so you know, my quest as a music director is to give people that opportunity to have the experience of being transformed.”
She’s focused on fresh approaches to repertoire, styles and concert settings both to give the young musicians a range of experiences but also to bring new people to Brott concerts. So the festival included everything this season from the music of James Bond to Dvorak and from Stravinski’s Firebird to an east coast kitchen party and three free concerts at Pier 8.
“Music is not always formal. You don't have to have a suit on. You don't have to have, you know, fancy dress. You can experience it with the sound of birds and the sound of a kid, you know, laughing and a dog barking, and it's a part of the experience, right?”
The festival finale comes Aug. 15 with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in the Boris Brott Great Hall in the FirstOntario Concert Hall. The concert will be dedicated to Brott, who would have celebrated his 80th birthday this year. The performance will feature past graduates of the National Academy Orchestra, and guest artists from across North America.
Miller says she was lured to the Brott Music Festival role by the opportunity to work with musicians of tomorrow.
Both the NAO and BrottOpera feature graduate-level musicians who are just embarking on their professional careers. The NAO program offers highly intense training over the nine-week festival. The orchestra members rehearse twice a day for three hours each.
The schedule is that of a professional musician, in that rehearsals might begin on a Tuesday for a performance that happens Thursday.
“They have to come prepared, and we have to work fast, and they have to very quickly, understand what it is to play these pieces,” says Miller. “I'm most inspired by the fact that this Brott Festival, over 37 years, has created, has supported, has developed some of Canada's finest artists and soloists. These are people that are playing in the major orchestras all across Canada and the world.”
BrottOpera, which formed 10 years ago and is based on the NAO model, is an intense, three-week paid opera program that offers emerging professional opera singers the opportunity and experience of performing with a full symphony orchestra.
“I'm excited that I'm working with this level of talent at this place in their careers. It's a really beautiful place for me to be as a conductor and a teacher.”
Miller is a resident of Vancouver who grew up in rural Saskatchewan.
It was hearing Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Faun during a school trip to the Regina Symphony as a 16-year-old kid from tiny Foam Lake that convinced Miller music was her path. She took piano lessons and learned clarinet at school.
But it was during her time as an undergraduate at the University of Saskatchewan that she caught the conducting bug. She was the pipe organist at a local church and soon found she was conducting the choir.
She loved it and started taking conducting courses at the University of Calgary in the summer. There, she met her future conducting teacher at the University of Michigan where she studied for five years, earning a master’s degree and then a doctorate.
She served as music director of Michigan Opera Works, assistant conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival and associate conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra before taking the music director post at the Victoria Symphony, which she held for 14 years.
Miller was well aware of Brott and his acclaimed work when she met him on a ferry to Vancouver where he was teaching a course on public speaking. Miller offered him a ride to his destination.
“And so we had a wonderful night getting to know each other and spending time together. And that's my one time really, truly being with Boris. But I very much treasure that.”
Brott was killed April 5, 2022 when he was by hit-and-run driver while out for a morning walk in his Durand neighbourhood. His death rocked the city and the classical world.
The festival is the embodiment of his vision, his passion and his life’s work in Hamilton, says Miller.
“The people that loved him are still here, and the audiences that loved him are still here. I feel his spirit in everything we do. I even often when we're sitting and having programming meetings feel him in the chair beside me. I do take very seriously the legacy that he is to all of us, and continues to be the inspiration that he was for this festival and his spirit lives on in the festival. I feel glad that I knew him, that I met him, but I also feel that, you know, I completely honour him, and want to carry on what it is that he was after, which was to train and to educate and to inspire and to elevate young Canadians in music and to share music with people.”
And Miller says her role is to guide the festival into its future.
“I think the passion and the love for the music, for the musicians, for the community, is now what's carrying this forward. And so I feel like we've turned into a joyful phase. There is always a shock and a feeling of grief whenever we think of losing Boris, but in this particular season, perhaps I feel like there is this joyous sense of renewal, and that, you know, the offspring of all of his ideas and all that he really dreamed about in terms of changing people's lives carries forward.”
Miller is a “breath of fresh air” for the festival, executive director Ardyth Brott, Brott’s widow, said in a press release. “I know Boris would love all her creative ideas and her passion for connecting our musicians to our audiences.”
The Aug. 15 concert will feature Mahler because the Austrian composer was a particular favourite of Brott, says Miller. Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is all about love, romance and dreaminess.
“It just felt very fitting to dedicate it to Boris but also to the artists who carry forward. It will be a chance for the community to share. We’ve invited many members of the HPO to take part. And that makes me happy. I just feel like music should bring us together and that's what it does, is that it helps to teach us to move forward, and helps to teach us to be open to each other and to connect to each other.”
Though the festival wraps up on Aug. 15, the organization will continue to present school education concerts in November plus family Christmas concerts and Handel’s Messiah in December.
NEED TO KNOW
Brott Music Festival 2024 finale
Mahler's Fifth Symphony
Boris Brott Great Hall, FirstOntario Concert Hall
1 Summers Lane, Hamilton
Aug. 15, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are here
