The Collingwood Music Festival is going big at home this year with a concert outdoors at Millennium Park featuring a 65-piece orchestra and a classically trained Indigenous tenor with two Juno awards.
While set up will have to begin on July 7, the show will ring out across Georgian Bay on the evening of July 8 when the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, led by Maestro Alain Trudel accompanies special guest Jeremy Dutcher.
The show will be on an outdoor stage on Collingwood's waterfront and will be the inaugural concert for the 2023 Collingwood Music Festival.
Festival director Daniel Vnukowski has been hyping up the show since it was confirmed. It will be the first time the orchestra shares a stage with Dutcher.
Dutcher is two-spirit and a Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick. He is a composer, tenor, performer, and award-winning musician. Dutcher has completed a research project that involved transcribing archival wax cylinder recordings of Wolastoq songs between 1907 and 1913 and composing songs inspired by and featuring those recordings.
"[Dutcher] has something unique in his voice ... it has that spark that I always look for as an artistic director," said Vnukowski. "One feels the authenticity in his performance."
Vnukowski has been working on booking Dutcher for a year now, always having in mind that a show featuring Dutcher's voice would be grandiose, and include an orchestra.
"[Dutcher] likes grand entrances, we like grant events," said Vnukowski. "So that's where the idea of doing it outdoors, which has been at the back of my mind for a long time, came from."
While the outdoor show and set up will take more coordination than ever for the festival, things have come together – including a shuttle option since there isn't enough parking on the spit to accommodate the audience for the show.
Dutcher will also be at the Mariposa Folk Festival this weekend in Orillia.
The festival has become more than Vnukowski dreamed it would be when he first planned a piano concert in support of Home Horizon.
"I had no idea that in a few short years it would go from a tiny shoestring budget to something that is now a go-to destination," said Vnukowski. "It's right up there with the top-10 classical music festivals in Ontario ... I never expected such quick growth."
The growth has also been reflected in the budget, as the festival was successful in every one of its grant applications with more than $130,000 coming in from sources across all four levels of government including municipal, county, provincial and federal.
He's excited about every musician and performer that will be part of this year's events, and has spent time choosing them with a varied audience in mind.
As the creative director, a professional musician, and the host of a classical music radio show, Vnukowski comes across a lot of music, and he uses these interactions to build the menu for each year's festival.
"I see it like a meal and I'm putting together ingredients," he said. "Knowing the diversity of our community and the growing population, I like to keep it expanding and always push that boundary just a little bit this year. Like, we're doing hip hop for the first time this year, but it's folk hip hop."
He's talking about the July 15 concert featuring Beny Esguerra and New Tradition Music. Esguerra is from Colombia, and his work combines Colombia Afro-Indigenous music with spoken word and hip-hop's cultural expressions. The songs make urgent calls for justice, environmental healing, and respect for ancestors and land treaties. Esguerra is a multi-instrumentalist and lyricist with two Juno nominations.
Vnukowski was joined by the festival board, sponsors, and local dignitaries in front of the Collingwood Public Library on July 4 to raise the flag marking the start of the festival.
During the ceremony, words of congratulations were offered by Collingwood Mayor Yvonne Hamlin, Clearview Mayor Doug Measures, Ontario Trillium Foundation rep Deborah Bloom Hall, MP Terry Dowdall and MPP Brian Saunderson.
"The talent you've brought to Collingwood from around the world is spectacular, it really is an international event," said Saunderson.
Vnukowski thanked the supporters who gathered at the library, noting the local sponsors and grants have helped the festival grow, since ticket sales only cover about one-third of the festival costs. But, he said, tickets do keep selling out.
"This town, this region, is craving for culture," he said. "For millennia, song and dance has been the binding factor for so many cultures and communities."
There will be nightly concerts from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church from July 9-15.
For the full festival lineup and tickets visit collingwoodfestival.com as well as from their box office, phone: (705) 416-1317. All concerts are from 7 to 9 p.m.
