The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity shrank considerably when the pandemic hit in March 2020. It’s revenue fell from $75 million to $35 million in a month; hundreds were laid off. But like many other creative enterprises, the Banff Centre persisted with innovative online programming that kept itself culturally engaged, and provided artists a way station on their disrupted creative journeys.
One such platform was the Centre’s Opera in the 21st Century program, which would ordinarily have been an on-site, monthlong residency in early summer, offering a select group of earlycareer singers, pianists and directors an intensive experience making innovative opera under the guiding hand of Artistic Director Joel Ivany, who has led the program for seven years. (Ivany was given a three-year extension in July.)
The program’s pandemic iteration became a four-module, online array of individual coaching, master classes, guest lectures, and for the first time, sessions on how to navigate the business of a performing career. The first of the four blocks began last November, and the last wrapped at the end of July with a filmed record of what some of the program’s 19 participants and their.
