Tags: Arts

Arts Go Broke.

I fear the domino of much-loved arts groups gasping their last breath has just begun:

– Soulpepper and Factory Theatre Lab have had to pull shows from their schedules or cancel premieres.
– Hot Docs and its famed Festival could cease to exist.
– Artscape is in receivership.

The Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council predict that by the end of the year many more groups will turn out their lights.

The reasons are as real as they are clear: ticket prices are rising even faster than restaurant meals and airfares; government support is wobbly, and corporate sponsors are going ‘in a different direction.’ That trifecta of doom has hit  exactly when galleries, theatres and concert halls are coming out of rehab after COVID blew up their audiences and shredded their balance sheets.

The Personal Sacrifices.

There’s not a government on earth that doesn’t have political staffers. History and Shakespeare are littered with them. Their job is to keep their leader in power. Occasionally, they need to speak truth to power so their leader doesn’t go off the rails. But in Canada today, the Prime Minister’s staffers face a very different task: speaking truth to lack of power.

The number of Presidents and Prime Ministers who, when their prospects for re-election looked dim, took their staffers’ advice and left with their heads held high in order to avoid a bloodbath at the polls  is vanishingly small. This is because power is not just an aphrodisiac, it’s the crack cocaine of occupations.

So asking Justin Trudeau’s Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, to take him for a walk in the snow, just like his father did on Feb. 28, 1984, and decide not to run again, I don’t think that will happen.

Read on…

Is this the golden age or dark ages of the arts?

Last Saturday night, we attended a performance by a baroque music group in a church on Bloor Street in Toronto. Even in the plumpest of times, the music of 17ᵗʰ and early 18ᵗʰ century Europe is both an acquired taste and a deep and narrow passion. No ERAS tour for concerti grossi. Yet there were 600 other baroque fans who stood and whistled and cheered at the concert’s end just like they did at Koerner Hall the night before for Joshua Redman.

I hadn’t heard Tafelmusik in many years and was surprised that this is their 45th anniversary. As I heard its 16 musicians playing on baroque instruments like the theorboand the viola da gamba, I was struck by how daring and different their concert was. Different sections played from different parts of the church, not once, (ho hum), but often. The cellist played standing up. (When was the last time you saw a cellist who was not sitting down?) The ‘conductor’ explained every piece before it was performed. Everyone on stage was having fun.

RamsayWrites

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