Live from the Banff

Leillehua Lanzelotti can remember writing music from an early age growing up in Honolulu, but her voice as a composer did not fully emerge until she had moved far away. 

“As soon as I started composing, my connection to Hawaii and my homesickness at the time living in Europe came out immediately,” she recalls of her days pursuing a career in violin performance. “It was almost as though composition was an outlet for a lot of the ways that I was trying to express myself that I didn’t have other outlets for.” 

Karen Slack didn’t even hear the full name of her album being read from the stage at the Crypto.com arena at the 67th Grammy Awards. 

“I still can’t believe it,” she says months later. “I leap up out of the chair and I’ve got this big, gorgeous gown on... I just felt like I was ten thousand feet above ground. It was extraordinary.” 

In an age where it is increasingly difficult to make a career in the arts, more aspiring artists are looking to diversify their skillsets in order to be employed in multiple positions. This is especially true in the world of theatre arts, where multitudes of people are needed both on and off the stage in order to maintain a career. 

One of the most iconic stories ever written in Canada is getting reimagined for the operatic stage at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity this month.  

It was love that first brought Éric Le Sage to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.  

“I first came here 40 years ago to meet my girlfriend at the time,” he recalls.  

“Sometimes it’s a fantastic discovery. Sometimes it’s more difficult. But I think it’s part of our job to do it, and I always loved it.” 

The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is one of the best places in Canada to explore new artistic expression and to add to one’s creative arsenal. This can be true even for one of the most celebrated masterworks in western classical music.  

Artists from a wide variety of mediums descend on the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity to gain new skills in their chosen field. Those skills extend far beyond the spotlight to the backstage roles, including lighting, sound, and, in the case of Steinbach's Lauren Peters, wardrobe. 

It’s one of classical music’s most iconic moments: the first bow strokes of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Exposed, simultaneously joyful and tragic, history’s greatest cellists from Jacqueline du Pré to Yo-Yo Ma to Pablo Casals have put their stamp on one of the most beloved pieces in the cello repertoire. 

Now, it’s Sung-Won Yang’s turn. 

For Nikki Pet, the idea for animating one of Igor Stravinsky’s greatest masterworks came from her friends in her undergraduate degree at Columbia University. 

“I had a lot of non-musician friends, and they would come to my regular recitals and sort of be like, ‘I’m here to support you,’” she recalls, “and then I would make eye contact with them when I performed and the lights would not be on upstairs. They were fully there because they’re my friend – they're not there because they were particularly engaged.”