Sean Bickerton

It’s amazing how The Titanic keeps coming up!

In the news I mean.

First there was Director James Cameron‘s death-defying plunge into the icy depths of the Mariana Trench; then the media craze over the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, all just in time for an epic new 3-D version of the movie.

For a ship that sank 100 years ago, that’s quite a splash!

Released in the fall of 1997, The Titanic also had a huge success in China.

The following Spring, I received a call from a somewhat desperate Chinese official asking if I could I help get the film’s stars –  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet -  to China that September to sing songs from the movie.

It was a crazy request, but a decade after Tiananmen Square, China was eager to re-engage with the west. Even after I patiently explained that Leo and Kate were movie stars, not singers, and that the Titanic was not a musical, the caller refused to be deterred.

“Couldn’t they just lip-synch?” he asked. Money, he assured me, was no object.

I knew without asking that a star of Mr. DiCaprio’s stature was never going to sing, lip-synch or otherwise. But I thought he might want a chance to see China. So, crazy or not, I asked; but Mr. DiCaprio was locked into rehearsals for Celebrity and The Man In the Iron Mask.

“Could you suggest someone else?” the contact asked.

I started scouring pop charts for emerging stars in Asian markets, watching videos, looking for someone big enough to sell out a stadium but new enough to be available on short notice.

We discussed one artist after another but no one interested them until a young singer named Ricky Martin, who was burning up the Spanish-language charts.

He’d just had a big splash performing a breakout hit – ‘The Cup of Life’ at the World Soccer Cup in France - for a worldwide TV audience. Kids in China were crazy about soccer and they had all seen Ricky’s performance at the World Cup. They loved the idea.

By this time it was late August, and I was with my partner, Tom, up at Sakinaw Lake. I had no fax, no online access and a cellphone that only worked if I walked back up into the woods behind the property.

Nonetheless, working with Hollywood agents, a UK rock producer, Ricky’s close-knit team in Puerto Rico, Lloyds of London, a fax machine at the tiny general store in Garden Bay and my new best friends in China, the deal was finally signed less than two weeks before the show!

Tom and I flew ahead to make sure everything was ready. On arrival in Bejing, we were met at the door of the plane and whisked straight out to a waiting cavalcade of cars. Tom was hustled into one car and I another.

I had no idea if we were being honored or arrested. There were six cars in all, two police cars up front and one behind, all with lights flashing and sirens blaring. They cleared traffic for us all the way to our hotel and thankfully we were delivered to the Mandarin, not the slammer. A day later we were up in the northeast corner of China in Dalian.

Ricky arrived with an entourage of twelve – two London agents, the rock producer, dancers, and Ricky’s close-knit, trusted team from his days as a teen hearth-throb in Menudo. His motorcade was spectacular, like an American President had arrived! They shut down the entire freeway for him.

Ricky is a genuine, kind person, a little shy and his team from Puerto Rico is protective, but they’re good guys and we enjoyed the chance to get to know them through a pretty intense week.

And to answer the obvious question, yes, Ricky did spend a lot of time in my hotel suite, almost an entire day once … recording shoutouts for every radio station in China, endlessly crooning: “Hi, this is Ricky Martin, coming to you on CTR1 …” etc.

How does Bo Xilai – figure of international intrigue, son of a revolutionary hero, and, just a few weeks ago, heir-apparent to Deng Xiaopeng - fit in?

In the late 90s, before he had risen to international prominence, Mr. Xilai was Mayor of Dalian, and he invited Tom and I to lunch the day after we arrived to thank me for helping them out of a jam – they had no show without Ricky. It was a small group in a private room and I sat next to him.

He was gracious, affable and attentive as a host, highly intelligent and had a good sense of humor. Occasionally he would turn to me, as can be the custom in some cultures, and burp while we were chatting, smiling widely to indicate his great enjoyment of the meal and comfort in my presence.

And I in turn did my best to indicate equal enthusiasm. It wasn’t eructational etiquette that flummoxed me that meal. I was in excruciating pain because a filling had fallen out while we were eating!

I didn’t want to disrupt the lunch, so I waited until we were finished before quietly mentioning my problem. Within the hour I was in a nearby dental clinic where a very gentle older dentist replaced my filling with one that lasted for years.

The group that got me involved very well connected, as I learned over three days as we drove from city to city for meetings. A pattern was quickly established. The Mayor of each city would be waiting for us at the city gates as we arrived. Everyone would get out of their cars, greetings and introductions were exchanged on the side of the freeway, we’d all pile back in and drive the rest of the way into the city for our meetings.

There were elaborate banquets, formal lunches, demonstrations, exhibitions, press conferences and signing ceremonies. I met Ministers, Governors, Mayors, bank heads and one dignitary after the next.

It was all a bit over the top, but I played my part and gave speeches and many toasts about peaceful relations, international cooperation, the need for cultural exchange and the fraternal brotherhood of mankind.

My hosts were so kind and solicitous that if I mentioned an interest in acrobatics, we’d be off that day to an elite gymnastics academy. A polite expression of interest in Chinese opera became a command performance the same afternoon.

One Sunday afternoon I asked about the recently discovered Terra Cotta Warriors. Within an hour, the Director had opened the museum and was giving us a private tour.

Back in Dalian, on the night after the dress rehearsal, I was invited to a special dinner with a Minister of Culture, so I dressed to the nines. But when I showed up in the lobby they all laughed, made me take off my jacket and tie, and explained this was a night out with the boys – no ties, no jackets, no formality, just their close group of friends.

We drank a lot of beer that night and had a lot of laughs, more than one at my expense! They took great delight in ordering things I’d never eaten before and watching my reaction as the Minister carefully placed choice items on my plate. But I held my own and felt privileged to be included.

Ricky was headliner for an extraordinarily lavish opening ceremony of an International Fashion Festival put on each year by the city of Dalian.

It was a massive production in a 60,000 seat stadium with 8,000 dancers, a choir of 1,000, orchestras, marching bands, paratroopers zipping down from the sky in formation, lasers, the works! They even had a U.S. Secretary of State among many other international dignitaries.

Then Ricky appeared with his dancers, the crowd roared, he crooned The Cup of Life and Maria, gyrated those sinuously loose latin hips, the entire place went nuts and it was all over!

And that is the story of my Titanic Dalian-ce with Ricky Martin and Bo Xilai!

“Out with the Old and In with the New!” has never rung more true for me than it does with the advent of 2012!

It’s only been five years since I moved back to Vancouver after twenty years away in New York. It’s taken that long just to find good Mexican!

So it was a complete  accident when I got caught up in local politics during efforts to improve my building.

When Peter Ladner came over to ask me to run, I spent the first half hour pointing out to him how unsuited I was then to be a candidate, having just moved home, with so few connections, etc.

But I’m incapable of doing anything half-heartedly, especially when it comes to underdogs, and what should have been a brief political detour ended up consuming the next three years of my life.

Some have taken exception to my post-campaign public renunciation of local politics and the demands of public life, thinking it originates from pique or is just a bruised ego talking.

Bruised ego aside, something I readily own up to, this last campaign left me in debt and it’s out of necessity that I must turn my attention to the responsibility I owe first to my family, as well as to the cadre of internationally-celebrated, grammy-award-winning clients we serve through our business, ArtistManager.Net: Talented Websites For The Most Talented People In The World!

I have spent my entire life involved in the performing arts and entertainment and had the privilege of working at the top of that profession internationally, first as a VP with Columbia Artists Management and with my own agency IAG, and now producing state-of-the-art websites that renowned artists use to communicate with the world.

I love Vancouver and the hundreds of remarkable people we’ve had the pleasure of meeting through politics since moving back, and I’ve grown immensely through the experience.

But I believe after three years of intense service that I’ve more than discharged any obligation I ever had to the NPA – twice over in my own estimation.

Now I must – and am eager to – focus my energy and attention on the re-imagined, reinvented, next-generation incarnation of our business that we will be launching next month.

The importance of community remains one of my fundamental values though, as does the prime importance in life of the arts. So I continue as Strata Chair of my building – Paris Place – continuing efforts to improve quality of life for our residents and for my neighborhood, in cooperation with the Crosstown Residents Association and False Creek Residents Association.

I also remain Chair of a Strategic Task Force for the Langley Community Music School co-founded by my sister Linda, third-largest music school in BC and one of the largest in western Canada.

And I will continue to write and speak out on issues I believe are important to a Canadian way of life I see as increasingly threatened.

Tom and I end 2011 a little leaner but much greener and even keener than ever before to meet the challenges of trying to invent a small but excellent slice of the future, an adventure we’ve been involved in conducting together since we first met in 1986, my first year in New York.

To everyone chasing their dreams, I salute you and share your passion for what comes next!

Here’s to a fabulous 2012!

Vancouver City Council is considering a staff report today allowing the Vancouver Art Gallery to move to 2/3 of Larwill Park. This could be a wonderful development if they incorporate a concert hall on the other 1/3 of the land. As this has come up again, I’m reprising my original article about Larwill Park.

I’m also pleased to note that Michael Geller has recently come out in favour of my proposal to close Cambie Street between Dunsmuir and Georgia Streets, in order to provide restaurants and bars that can animate this area at night.

In its heyday, Larwill Park was a centre of life in the city, home to games of baseball, lacrosse, football and cricket; the site of political demonstrations, rallies, fairs and concerts; and a marshalling field and drill ground for troops. Parades, carnivals, Ferris wheels, sports and politics animated a site once dedicated to fun in a city not well known for it.

By contrast today it sits dark, covered in asphalt, used as a parking lot, and the blocks along Dunsmuir and Georgia Street east of Homer are dead at night, bereft of the street-level commercial activity that’s the life-blood of any urban setting.

Read more…

The sad truth is that our public consultation process appears to be broken, leaving little trust on any side of the equation:

• Residents that dare express an opinion on new development in their neighbourhoods are regularly derided as NIMBY no-nothings …

• The developers that built the extraordinary city we see around us and provide the daycares, rec centres and libraries we need are regularly decried as barbarians intent on destroying every last vestige of everything held sacred …

• City planners are unfairly defamed as incompetent, uncaring or corrupt. and often in the breath …

• And the public’s overall opinion of politicians is unprintable …

We’re told the overarching concept for our city’s future is ‘Green Capital,’ yet eco-density has become so loaded with partisan invective it has become a stand-in for “I want to destroy your neighbourhood” on the one side and “I would rather die than see one new building in my community” on the other.

Unfortunately, the very solutions that might help – neighbourhood plans or visioning exercises – are reputed to be too expensive, time-consuming, complicated or beyond the city’s resources.

What to do?

I have a suggestion.

2011 is the 125th Birthday of the City of Vancouver. A much-belated and reluctant effort by the city to embrace a year-long celebration envisaged by the previous council has led to a tepid, half-hearted effort, and the community and arts groups charged with staging the celebration are left uncertain of funding.

Perhaps we should take advantage of the oversight to propose an entirely different kind of birthday present for our city. What if we celebrated this anniversary by engaging in a four-year planning process to lay out a broad neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood City Plan for the next 125?

In that four year period – the life of the next council – we could take the time to do the following:

1) Reinvent and reinvigorate the planning and consultation processes.
2) Prepare a thorough analysis of what assets each neighbourhood has, those it lacks and a vision or plan emphasizing its unique character.
3) From the neighbourhood study, prepare a comprehensive list of assets the city needs.
4) Develop a new CityPlan taking into account the individual plans and needs of each neighbourhood along with the needs and future growth of the entire City.
5) Implement broad-based zoning based on that plan.

I realize the best-laid plans can easily end in quagmire, but if we actively involved city planners, area residents, businesses, schools, social profit organizations and the developers in creating a meaningful consultation process, and if we allowed each community to participate in the horse-trading surrounding density and needed amenities in their community, we might find more commonality than is thought now to exist. False Creek North is a classic example I’ll write more babout later.

One final thought. I think transit-based density is the key. If we focus density where it already exists and along major transit arterials, and if our plans provide enough street-level commercial to animate streets and provide needed local services within walking distance of each community, we could manage the change coming to our city as we continue to add residents in the most environmentally responsible way possible.

One thing is certain. If we don’t take this opportunity to plan the future of our city for the next 125 years, that spot-rezoned future will plan itself.

But it won’t be pretty.

On Saturday, April 24, 2010,  we staged Vancouver 2050: Creative City, a forum called to envision the city of Vancouver as a creative city in the year 2050. Moderated by Max Wyman, the forum featured addresses by Maestro Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of theVancouver Symphony, Norman Armour, Artistic Director of the PUSH Festival, Amber Dawn, Director of the Queer Screen Film Festival and Hank Bull, Executive Director of Centre A.

A panel consisting of Miro Cernetig, columnist with the Vancouver Sun; Howard Jang, Executive Director, Arts Club Theatre; David Lemon, Executive & Artistic Director, Health Arts Society; Bernard Magnan, Chief Economist, Vancouver Board of Trade; and Vanessa Richards, Director of Community Engagement Through The Arts, Simon Fraser University; discussed those presentations with the speakers and then the floor was opened up to the audience for a lengthy debate of the ideas presented.

Our programme as downloadable PDF:  Vancouver_2050_Programme

The session lasted four hours and was well-attended by more than a hundred leaders of arts and culture from Greater Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. In the words of Impresario David YH Lui, the most important accomplishment of the event may be that it took place at all. According to Max Wyman, 1969 was the last time so many of the city’s arts leadership had gathered in one room for this kind of collaborative discussion. (A partial list of organizations attending appears at the bottom of this post.)

I’ll be writing more about the event later this week, but in the meantime, here are my introductory remarks at the opening of the meeting:

Good morning! It’s great to see so many friends in the theatre – it’s truly appreciated, especially at this ungodly hour. My name is Sean Bickerton and on behalf of the organizing committee it’s a pleasure to welcome you all to Vancouver 2050: Creative City.

I’m very much a product of the arts institutions gathered in this room. I played violin in the Vancouver Youth Orchestra, performed in joint concerts with the Vancouver Symphony, studied theory and piano at the Langley Community Music School, bused in with my drama class to plays at the Playhouse, competed in Friends of Chamber Music, went to my first Opera, Carmen, produced by the VOA at the QE, saw Rubinstein thanks to Hugh Pickett, the National Ballet thanks to David YH Lui, and Jesse Norman thanks to Leila Getz’ recital series among many other highlights.

It was that rich cultural background which made it possible for a kid from Cloverdale to end up in New York as a Vice President of Columbia Artists producing tours for great artists and ensembles. That experience in New York wouldn’t have been possible without the organizations represented in this room.

So I’m sold! I’m a total fan!

But what about the general public? What, to badly paraphrase one of our panelists, Vanessa Richards, would it take to transform the public perception of local arts and culture in the same way that people’s perceptions of BC wine and local produce have been transformed in recent years?

BCs wine industry, like every industry,  needed an infrastructure put in place before it could start to thrive. Do the arts in this city have the basic infrastructure they need?

In addition to considering infrastructure in 2050, we also asked the speakers to address the issue of sustainability and enrichment of programs if possible.

Some people have asked why the year 2050? Because it is far enough away to allow us to think past our day to day existential battles and imagine something better. And because the future we don’t plan is already planning us.

Before I go, many thanks to the Arts Club Theatre, which has generously provided this Theater, a very helpful Staff & the sound system for today’s forum; to Max Wyman, for agreeing so kindly to moderate today’s proceedings; to our four amazing speakers for sharing their visions; our distinguished panel for adding their insights; our audience for lending their keen minds; my great partners on the organizing committee for their hard work and generosity of spirit; the Borealis String Quartet for their poetic beauty; and my husband Tom, who’s busy photographing and videotaping the proceedings.

Thanks are also due to Tourism Vancouver for sponsoring the transcription of the proceedings; Kulture Shock Media for the website and printing of programmes; and Sean Farrell of NG Farrell Sports & Culture Marketing for helping out today.

Thanks to you all!

Today’s moderator needs no introduction, but deserves a good one. He is widely admired as a man of integrity and one of our country’s great cultural thinkers and commentators. It’s both an honour and personal pleasure to introduce as our Moderator, today … Max Wyman!

Organizations attending: Community Arts Council of Vancouver, Vancouver City Council, Diane Farris Gallery, Independent Times, Vancouver Symphony, Vancouver Su, Ballet BC, Langley Community Music School, Health Arts Society, UBC Arts Umbrella, Vancouver Pro Musica, Vancouver Board of Trade, Centre A, Arts Club Theatre, Alliance for the Arts, Vancouver Chamber Choir, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Play Creative Design, Vancouver Symphony, SFU, UBC, City of Richmond, Neworld Theatre, 42nd Street, Tyee, Heritage Vancouver, City of North Vancouver, Roede House Museum, explorAsian, City Opera, Arts Advocacy BC, Eastide Culture Crawl, Writers Festival, Vancouver Cantata Singers, 2010 Legacies Now, Canadian Heritage, Vancouver Biennale, Bard on the Beach, PuSh Festival, Metro Vancouver, Knowledge TV Network, VanCity, International Centre of Arts for Social Change, Art Space Action, False Creek Residents Association, Music on Main, Out Film Festival, Electric Company, Vancouver Opera Association, Vancouver Playhouse.

Please join us tomorrow, Saturday, April 24 at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage at 8:30 am for Vancouver 2050: Creative City! – a public Arts & Culture Forum moderated by Max Wyman and featuring addresses by Maestro Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony, Norman Armour, Artistic Director of the PUSH Festival, Amber Dawn, Director of the Out On Screen Film Festival and Hank Bull, Executive Director of Centre A. Admission is free, although we’ll gratefully accept donations to cover basic costs.

Our four arts leaders will each present their vision of what Vancouver as a Creative Capital would look like in 2050, with a view to infrastructure, sustainability and the kind of innovation and enrichment of activities that could energize broader community engagement.

After those presentations, a high-level panel drawn from the arts, business and social profit sectors will discuss with the speakers the concepts they’ve presented, and then open the discussion up to include invited arts, business & community leaders and members of the public.

Our goal with this discussion is to bring leaders from the arts and business communities together in order to fully imagine Vancouver as a 21st-century Creative City with a correspondingly vibrant creative economy.

I am totally and completely a product of the arts institutions of this city and Province. I grew up in rural south Surrey in the 60s and traveled into Vancouver every week by Greyhound bus for violin lessons and rehearsals of the Vancouver Youth Orchestra. Every month my high school drama class attended plays at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and I spent summers up at the Courtenay Youth Music Camp.

Later I played violin in the Victoria Symphony, worked as a summer intern for the Vancouver Recital Society, worked in the Vancouver Symphony subscription sales room and managed the Vancouver Youth Orchestra and Courtenay Music Camp I’d attended as a boy.

It was that broad-based arts experience that made it possible for me to go to work for Columbia Artists in New York, first as an Assistant and eventually as Vice President, managing careers and producing tours for dance companies, orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles in Europe, North America and Asia.

As a result, my commitment to these arts institutions and to the artists and artisans that make Vancouver such an engine of enlightenment is total, and I want to help ensure the same opportunities are here for the next extraordinary generation of talent our city is now producing.

Many thanks to David Lemon, Executive & Artistic Director, Health Arts Society, Howard Jang, Executive Director, Arts Club Theatre and Paul Sontz, Director of Business Development for Tourism Vancouver and Tickets Tonight, for serving with me as the organizing committee for this event.

Please join us on Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 8:30 am in the Arts Club Revue Stage for a glimpse of Vancouver 2050: Creative City!

This Sunday, April 18, at 7:30 pm at the Vancouver Playhouse, Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen will perform Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, the sublime piece of music responsible for his re-appearance on the Vancouver Recital Series stage just two years after his debut here during the 2007-2008 season.

During his visit for that first recital, VRS Artistic Director Leila Getz heard Mr. Pohjonen practicing Gaspard backstage for an upcoming concert in a different city. It was so brilliant she immediately re-engaged him to perform the work here in Vancouver – before he’d even played his first concert.

When I worked at Columbia Artists in New York, I was thrilled to be part of the team managing Andras Schiff’s concert career. His Bach even inspired me to write a poem I’ll append to the bottom of this post. I was and remain a huge fan of Andras as one of the great pianists of our day. On learning that he chose Juho Pohjonen for the 2009 Klavier Festival Ruhr Scholarship, I knew this must be a rare young artist and how fortunate we are to have someone of his artistry here in Vancouver.

According to The New York Times:

If we needed proof that exciting new talent is in the pipeline, there was the marvellous American debut of Juho Pohjonen at [Carnegie’s] Weill Recital Hall.  Mr Pohjonen, offered a formidable mixed program, topped by thrilling accounts of two fiendishly difficult works by a fellow Finn, Esa-Pekka Salonen.

On Sunday, you can hear for yourself what all the fuss is about, as Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit is the first piece on Juho’s programme. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster.

The poem that Andras inspired?

I’m excited to be leaving Thursday for NYC to speak at a forum at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in New York on Saturday. The forum is part of an International Global Cultural Exchange co-sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The program seeks to provide professional development opportunities to emerging performing artists, managers and presenters between the ages of 19-30 from developing countries, in this case seven performing arts presenters from Russia, Palestine, Syria and Pakistan. They will be in New York to meeting with arts professionals from January 6 – 20, 2010.

The overall goal of the Cultural Visitors program is to energize the work of emerging international artists, presenters and managers in their own countries by bringing them to the United States and providing them with:

After a week in New York, they will go on to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. All of the participants have some background and work experience in the performing arts. They have expressed interest in learning more about best practices of and challenges facing U.S. presenters, development and management of new works and festivals, marketing and promotions initiatives and advocacy.

The arts confer on its initiates a shared language and ethos that transcend national boundaries and any narrow sense of contemporary tribalism. Those lucky enough to participate are imbued from a young age with a respect for other cultures and for new kinds of creativity and expression.

The arts and culture are the ultimate response to the nihilism of militant extremism and extreme militarism. The State Department should be commended for the initiative and urged to undertake more such exchanges, fostering international understanding and worldwide support for peaceful forms of free expression. I’m honoured to be one of many chosen to take part.

My New Years Resolution for 2010 is to try and be more temperate.

I’m passionate about the issues I care deeply about, and while diplomatic by nature, sometimes I get a bit heated in pursuit of those causes, particularly when I feel there is an underdog in need of defense.

I feel I erred in this regard in my recent post – A Potemkin Olympics – (since amended) regarding the contretemps that erupted between VANOC and organizers of the Opening Ceremonies on one side, and the Vancouver Symphony and Vancouvery Youth Symphony on the other. I regret the way I characterized those involved on the Olympics organizing side and the lack of respect I exhibited for the producers of the Opening Ceremonies.

More particularly, I wish to apologize – in Memoriam, as Bob Ransford points out – to Jack Poole, head of VANOC in this regard. I never criticized him, but having criticized the organization he ran so successfully, i feel compelled to also note on the same page that he is universally praised by those I look up to as someone who was one of the great Vancouverites, with highly admirable values and deeply committed to this city.

And to acknowledge, as Rod Mickleburg pointed out recently in The Globe & Mail, that many of the events tarnishing the Olympic image were out of VANOC’s control.

While I disagree with some of the decisions taken by VANOC and the Opening Ceremonies, I wish to state categorically that I do so with full respect for the internationally-celebrated team chosen to showcase our city to the world. We are all looking forward to a unique spectacular that magical day.

I give the organizers of the Olympics and Paralympics, and the producers of the Opening Ceremonies full respect for their extraordinary achievements so far, and my full support for their efforts to bring honour to our city, province and nation next month. We will all be watching with pride. And in the year to come, if ever disagree I must, I will endeavour to disagree more respectfully.