2022 Music Summer Season

The Cause

We propose having an outdoor summer music festival consisting of 3 to 4 concerts comprising a mixture of light classical and ethnic folk music suitable for outdoors performances. All performances will be by local musicians from Calgary and Alberta. This will fill a gap in Calgary’s performing arts scene and provide much needed employment for musicians and support staff.
For the last 1 1/2 year the Calgary audiences have been deprived of live performances. The Instrumental Society of Calgary was forced to cancel the last part of its 2019-2020 OnStage season, as well as the complete 2020-2021 season. This has negatively affected musicians as well as audiences.
This situation has been partially dealt with by streaming concerts. However we feel that they can't replace performances with a live audience and has led to "streaming fatigue".
In normal times Calgary has a vibrant music scene with a variety of world-class performances. These cover the whole range of classical, jazz, folk, country, rock etc. music. However, these are mostly in the fall-to-spring seasons and there is a lack of such activities in summertime. We believe there is a great opportunity to fill this gap with a summer musical festival.
We propose having an outdoors Summer season of 3 to 4 concerts with a mixture of light classical and folk music suitable for outdoors performances. All would be local musicians from Calgary and Alberta.
A Summer music festival would fill a vacuum in artistic performances. We think that these performances would be most welcome as a break after the covid restrictions.
The ISC has over 30 years of experience in presenting classical chamber music performances by local musicians. As such, we have gained a well-respected “brand” in the local scene. This proposal will extend our exposure to new audiences as well as reward our season members with additional summer listening opportunities. Top-quality musicians will be employed as our audiences have come to expect over the years.
We propose to present a varied program of music that will appeal to a wide spectrum of audiences, and introduce young listeners to classical and ethnic folk music. The concerts will be presented outdoors, taking advantage of Calgary’s great summer weather and long evenings. As such, the programs will be selected from more accessible music as befitting such concerts.

Who Will it Benefit?

The main beneficiary would be the Calgary audiences. We expect that there will be renewed interest in attending live performances. They will have an uplifting effect on peoples mental health.
Local musicians and support staff will also benefit. They have been restricted in their ability to perform and they are anxious to be back on the stage