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!

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!

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.

UPDATE 1/2/10:  (Revised)

NEWS UPDATE ADDED 12/21/09 2:01 pm

I’m pleased to report that VANOC has issued a formal apology to Maestro Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for “putting it in an ‘untenable’ position” according to today’s report from The Globe and Mail by David Ebner.

Nonetheless, it remains deeply troubling that our own grammy-award winning orchestra and internationally celebrated Music Director Bramwell Tovey will not be featured during the Opening Ceremonies seen around the world.

We were told the Olympics would showcase our city and province to the entire planet. So why are they missing this opportunity to showcase one of our greatest cultural crown jewels, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra?

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(POSTSCRIPT ADDED BELOW ON 12/21/09 11:01 AM)

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE 12/19/09

Today The Globe and Mail published an article by Marsha Lederman and Rod Mickleburgh entitled The Day The Music Died, which begins:

As the Winter Olympics near, the Games are being hit by defections from the opening and closing ceremonies.

The Grammy-winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and its celebrated conductor Bramwell Tovey walked away from the opening ceremonies this week after being asked to prerecord music that would then be mimed by others during the live, lavish spectacle. Yesterday, Mr. Tovey called the plan fraudulent, likening it to Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson’s “faux gold medal” at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Mr. Johnson was stripped of his medal when he tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. “In our field, for you to plagiarize somebody else’s recording – to mime it and pretend that it’s you – is absolutely on a par with Ben Johnson’s fraud. … It’s non-Olympian in spirit and VANOC really should have known better.”

Mr. Tovey, meanwhile, said VANOC’s plan to have an orchestral segment mimed during the opening ceremonies reminded him of the furor over lip-synching by a young girl at the 2008 Summer Olympics. “I said ‘no’ to VANOC, because I felt it was dishonest. I thought it was fraudulent. It’s promoted with public money, and I didn’t want anything to do with this kind of dishonest practice.” After the Beijing lip-synching controversy, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell vowed there would be no lip-synching during Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.

But that was then. Now we learn that instead of setting a new low, the 2008 Olympics set a new Olympic standard for muzzling dissent and the Milli Vanilli-style faux-performance embraced by those producing Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.

I first heard Grammy Award-winning Soprano Renee Fleming singing Strauss’ Four Last Songs at Carnegie Hall as part of a fundraising concert for Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS. I’ve never forgotten the beauty of her voice since. She is simply one of the greatest singers on the face of this earth.

Musical America‘s Vocalist of the Year in 1997, Renee Fleming also received the inaugural 1996 Solti Prize from L’Academie du Disque Lyrique. Her recording of American arias, I Want Magic, recorded in New York with James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra was named “Record of the Month”, by Gramophone Magazine, naming her in the review as one of the all-time greats.

Repértoire Magazine reviewed the recording as “The most beautiful manifesto imaginable for the last fifty years of American operatic creation.” The New York Times wrote: “Ravishing melodies, ravishingly sung…Ms. Fleming convincingly gives lie to those who maintain that the golden age of singing is past.”

After one of the most spectacular summers in memory, something … or rather someone … is in the air …

First it was one of our website clients – grammy-award-winning Soprano Ana Maria Martinez. For those of you not familiar with her artistry, Ana Maria graces the cover of September’s Opera Magazine and appears regularly with the likes of Placido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli.

There she was, mesmerizing audiences as the mermaid in Rusalka at Glyndebourne this summer when she became entangled in fishing nets decorating the set. In slow motion, struggling to remain upright, Ana Maria fell off the stage down into the orchestra pit on top of the cello section of the London Philharmonic! Thankfully, after being rushed to hospital, Ana Maria was only bruised and has gone on performing for audiences all over the world. In true show biz fashion, Ana Maria’s understudy stepped in and finished the performance to cheers all around. The show must go on!

Not long ago, Steve Tyler of Aerosmith fell off a rainy catwalk above a stage at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.

According to the BBC, a storm had knocked out their sound system: “They were playing Love In An Elevator and no one could hear them any more.” Apparently after about a minute, Steven Tyler came out to entertain the troops, dancing in a storm high on a catwalk overhead the audience.

Anything to save the show …

But then, “during a spin, Steven lost his balance and fell into the audience, hitting his head on a railing as he fell. He was airlifted to hospital and thankfully, everything turned out fine.”

Last Friday, Conan O’Brian was taping a stunt with Teri Hatcher when he fell backwards and hit his head, suffering a mild concussion. A rerun was aired, and Conan was released from hospital only to joke about his next stunt: “Tune in tomorrow when Eva Longoria pushes me down an elevator shaft!”

That same day, September 25, the North West Florida Daily News reports that: “David Ott, former conductor and music director of the Philharmonic of Northwest Florida, had just finished conducting the debut of his new opera, “The Widow’s Lantern,” for the Pensacola Opera.

“All the lights were off, and I went back to get my score. … I stepped onto what I thought was the floor (of the orchestra pit) but there was nothing there.”

Ott fell 14 feet into the basement below the orchestra pit. “All I could think was that I was falling into hell,” he recalled with a grim laugh. “I was so glad when I hit because it finally stopped. It was the best of times and the worst of times,” Ott quipped. The conductor was seriously injured but is now recovering well and expects to be back conducting and composing soon.

The show must go on!

In many years of producing concert tours for Columbia Artists, I remember heroic efforts by artists prevailing through illness, personal crisis and force majeure weather in order to arrive, ready, willing and able to perform at the next theatre. On one tour a bad storm left us short-handed, so I drove the St. Louis Symphony’s instruments overnight across the Appalachians in a blizzard I’ll never forget. Dozens of tractor-trailers were strewn helter-skelter across the freeway and I was the only thing moving that night. But the orchestra made their Lincoln Center concert.

The show must go on.

Here in Vancouver, we are more privileged than many  realize to have such a spectacularly gifted troupe of performing and visual artists in our midst. Many cities around the world would give anything to have an award-winning orchestra, or a theatre community or recital series as extraordinary.

Our community of artists prove time and again their greatness and their devotion to the public. They are literally falling all over themselves to give everything they have in order to enlighten, amuse and move us.

UPDATED 9/25/09 (see related articles below)

In just five months, thousands of the world’s greatest athletes will be gathered inside BC Place from every corner of the globe, all of the world’s nations standing together, waiting to compete peacefully on a global Vancouver stage.

Imagine, if you will, the opening ceremonies for those 2010 Olympic Winter Games, with tens of thousands of spectators from more than a hundred countries waiting expectantly in the stands for those first electrifying strains of the Olympic fanfare. Picture the sight of that massive crowd, packed to the rafters. Think about the billion-plus viewers watching on TV and online for the lighting of that ancient torch, symbol of Athens, cradle of democracy.

Now imagine that … but without any music. Without any musicians. Without any lighting or choreography or dance or movement. Without costumes, sets or decorations. Without performance of any kind – no one to entertain or enlighten us. No text or symbolic meaning, no poetry, no actor’s soaring rhetoric  … nothing.

What are we left with? A cold, dark stadium of athletes standing in silence listening to politicians give speeches. As much as I love politics, that has to be one of the more depressing and Orwellian sights one could imagine.

Yet that is the world we seem to be contemplating as we start to face the real costs of a worldwide financial crisis triggered by the profligate greed of financiers not satisfied with just fleecing the world’s consumers.

Here in Vancouver, the effects are just starting to be felt as governments at all levels slash support for the arts.

To give credit where it’s due, the federal government got into the act first, demeaning the arts and its contribution to Canadian culture during the last election campaign. According to The Toronto Star:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sparked a culture war in the federal election campaign with a claim that “ordinary people” don’t care about arts funding.

Under fire for his government’s $45 million in cuts to arts and culture funding, the Conservative leader yesterday said average Canadians have no sympathy for “rich” artists who gather at galas to whine about their grants.

“I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough, when they know those subsidies have actually gone up – I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people,” Harper said in Saskatoon, where he was campaigning for the Oct. 14 election.

These comments caused a great hue and outcry, and audiences jammed all-candidate forums to discuss the arts and their importance to a country overwhelmed by a commercial culture to the south that is oblivious to our values, history and our place in the world.

Some went so far as to question how it’s even possible to assert Canadian sovereignty without a unifying culture that makes us that very thing – Canadian. Compounding irony upon irony, this question is actually inscribed on our Twenty-Dollar bill, in the words of Gabrielle Roy, one of Canada’s many internationally-celebrated writers: “Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?” Nonetheless, Mr. Harper’s government was re-elected, and the cuts went ahead.

Surprisingly, the City of Vancouver joined in. As a longtime advocate for the arts, I was proud to take part in a civic election which confirmed the broad and unanimous agreement among all three major parties of the centrality of the arts to a healthy, vibrant society, and the unique importance of the arts to Vancouver’s emerging economy.

The party I ran for, the NPA,  has a long history of strong support for the arts. The last council increased arts funding significantly and undertook a number of creative new initiatives. These include a new program of cultural tourism, the new post of Vancouver’s own Poet Laureate, public art programs, the international Vancouver Art Biennale now underway and Vancouver 125 – a cultural celebration of Vancouver’s 125th birthday in 2011.

The NPA also conducted a highly-successful, inclusive and consultative city-wide review of arts programs to streamline and reduce administration costs for granting programs while increasing funding. The NPA also approved a $150,000 study in an effort to help save the Pantages Theatre project.

Our main opponents during that election, Vision, agreed with our assessment of the arts’ centrality to a liveable, economically-vibrant, creative city. According to Gregor Robertson:

A world-class city needs to foster artistic creativity, and attract innovators from all sectors around the world. It’s time we ditched the red-tape, ‘no-fun city’ label and embraced a culture of creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation, to help our artistic and small-business sectors thrive in a competitive economy. Together, we will make Vancouver a creative capital in North America.

Vision campaign literature stated: “A successful city … invests in talent. It has the courage to reward creativity and celebrate innovation.”

Yet the first act of the new Vision council after the campaign was to cut arts funding by 8%. No increase. Not even the status quo. An 8% cut.

Now, it wouldn’t really be fair to say they’ve done nothing for the arts. As their campaign literature proudly notes:  ”Vision openly opposed arts funding cuts in the 2008 federal budget.” And I suspect they’ll make a show next week by ‘openly opposing’ the arts funding cuts in the new provincial budget as well.

But the motion we’re sure to see passing the next council criticizing the province will accomplish nothing more than reducing the arts to a political football useful only to those interested in scoring points against the BC Liberals. It will do nothing to provide leadership on the arts sector now so sadly lacking, and worse, it won’t do anything to put their money back where their mouth was during the campaign.

Incredibly, the Mayoral debate sponsored by the Alliance for the Arts between Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson was actually billed as a debate about Gregor Robertson’s new plan for the arts. Unfortunately, we now know what his real plan was. But before the election, here’s what the Mayor promised:

Based in part on those campaign promises, Vision won a resounding political victory which presented a unique opportunity to bring the entire city together in a united effort to address the many challenges our city now confronts.

Instead, the Mayor appears to have emulated the Pythonesque political lunacy of Yes Minister, adopting Sir Humphrey’s motto: “In Defeat, Malice. In Victory, Revenge.” He could have dealt with the international financial crisis now rocking our world by seeking a broad consensus on the best way forward. But our Mayor chose to use the crisis and its impact on the Athlete’s Village to launch an attack on the already-defeated NPA, politicizing a situation resulting from mandates imposed by three different administrations. As a result of tactics like these, our City remains divided at the very time we face some of the most serious challenges in decades.

How do those challenges affect the Arts sector of our economy? That brings us to the Province. Last in, but taking the biggest kick at the can. I’m completely sympathetic to those elected officials handling our Province’s finances at a time of financial crisis and fin-de-siecle, epochal global change. Their first obligation has to be ensuring the province’s families have healthcare and education along with the other crucial services relied on by all.

But in recent years, we have spent billions of taxpayer dollars on infrastructure projects, including the spectacular new Conference Centre which was, ironically, built on land long promised for a public concert hall. Businesses have received millions more in tax reductions and direct subsidies. Hundreds of millions more are scheduled to pay for the new roof of the soccer stadium, a subsidy to benefit the private owners of the BC soccer franchise.

Yet once visitors get here for their conference, won’t they want to take in a play or a concert, the way tourists do in every other major city on earth? Who will be left to perform in our new retractable-roof stadium?

In general, tourism to Canada is sadly crashing, dashing our fond hopes for all those green, tourism-related service jobs. The aquarium I love is not enough. What will attract the tourists of the future to come here?

In the past two and half years, I’ve seen great artists perform in Vancouver that I was never able to afford in New York. During a recent performance by the Jerusalem String Quartet, I spoke to a woman who had flown all the way from Japan just to hear that performance! A friend who operates cultural tours in Europe tells me that business is booming. Why can’t we bring those tourists here?

Our vibrant arts economy has made Vancouver an international leader in film, music, game design and other related fields. Yet, according to the Globe and Mail, the provincial Arts Council budget is being reduced from a paltry $22 million – already one of the lowest per-capita in Canada – to some $2.2 million over the next two years. A 90% reduction.

I’m sorry, but that’s not a budget cut. It is a knife-edge applied to the throat of the arts in this province and inimical to the kind of province I want to live in.

In addition, two factors have combined to make the impact of what amounts to an all-out assault on arts funding even worse. The first is the way it’s been done, in what I can only describe as an irresponsible ‘now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t’ funding debacle:

• Arts groups may get grants from two sources provincially – the BC Arts Council, and the Gaming / Lottery fund. There are strict conditions and they are reviewed by experts in each field.
• Last March, the  BC Arts Council announced it’s budget had been cut nearly in half, from $19 million to 11 million.
• Within a month however, grant recipients were then told that they would get a supplemental grant from the Provincial budget surplus to make up most of the lost arts council funding.
• Then all the Gaming funds were frozen, leaving many staff working unpaid over the dry summer months and hoping for a reprieve this fall.
• In late August, arts groups then received three different letters – from the Arts Council, the Minister of Culture and from the Gaming Commission saying that they would receive their grants, but the monies would be paid through the Gaming accounts with restrictions making it harder to use the funds.
• Then, recipients of the usual annual Gaming grants, who had been waiting since May to learn their fate, were told that they would receive no funds this year from Gaming grants.
• A few days later, 534 groups who had previously received letters from the Gaming fund advising them of a multi-year commitment of funding, were told that, despite the freeze, they would actually receive their Gaming funds this year as promised.
• That still left the majority of arts groups, those with no multi-year commitments, with no Lottery funds this year.

Confused? Consider how difficult it is for these cultural institutions to plan for the next week, let alone their usual five-year window.

Where does this leave the arts groups in Vancouver? Internationally-celebrated gems like the Vancouver Art Gallery or the Grammy-award winning Vancouver Symphony Orchestra? This year, now that the dust has settled, many are OK. But next year, they face the prospect of a 92% cut in Provincial funding in the very year the world will be coming to our doors expecting to celebrate our cultural diversity.

The second factor aggravating this crisis is the timing. On top of severe government cutbacks, Arts groups are already taking it on the chin thanks to our new Great Recession:

• Individual donations are holding, but trends are worrying because of the economic environment.
• Business sponsorships for the Olympics are dropping like flies. Can you imagine what business support for the arts is like in this environment?
• Ticket subscriptions – the financial lifeline of all arts organizations – for the largest institutions are doing OK, but are a challenge for smaller groups. People are buying tickets, but to fewer events and buying cheaper seats, so overall revenues are down.
• The foundations where most well-run organizations keep their endowments have taken a severe hit, facing arts groups with the devil’s choice of going without endowment income this year or having to dip into principal to maintain their budget.

And finally, the fact that the province waited until after the election to tell these groups they weren’t getting anything this year leaves many arts organizations in the red with no time to balance their budget before the end of their fiscal year – for most, the end of August. That unavoidable deficit will now make them ineligible for funding from the Canada Council and other granting agencies this coming year, setting in motion a cascading devastation to the arts sector that will unfold for years to come.

Where is the leadership we need? Our core arts institutions in the City of Vancouver are in crisis. To preserve their viability and badly-needed contribution to our economy and the city’s livability, there must be a non-partisan arts summit that brings together the Arts Alliance, the Vancouver Board of Trade, all three levels of government, arts organizations, granting bodies and foundations to work out a plan to help these core cultural assets survive until the economy recovers. Above all they need predictability and stability.

The Enlightenment happened centuries ago, but it is not, as some think, a fixed event in history that automatically innoculates all subsequent societies forever more. The commitment to Reason and Science, the Arts and Democratic ideals, to the Enlightenment itself, must be renewed by every civilization, each generation, by every person in fact, one individual at a time.

At the moment, those prospects appear to be dimming in the City of Vancouver.

UPDATE I (9/26/09)   RELATED ARTICLES:

Arts-cuts website paints gov’t as ‘disastrous’

B.C. government Report On Socio-economic Impact of the Arts Removed from Arts Ministry Website

Vancouver politicians must unite to fight arts cuts

I must confess that I was feeling a little overwhelmed by things of late. By the sorry drumbeat of each day’s news, certainly. It’s hard to conceive of the scale or baseness of the criminality that has brought the world to such a sorry state.

And I despair at the recent loss of one of Vancouver’s most kind and devoted, while I think back to the Vancouver of my youth, free of guns and gangland slayings …

I must also confess to feeling the weight of the responsibilities I’ve taken on since the election. I care very deeply about the causes and organizations I support, and want to ensure I do a good job and contribute real value.

And, of course, Life itself presses in while we are making all our grand plans – the normal wear and tear of age, and the sudden illness that reminds us of our own mortality and just how truly precious and rare are those around us that we love.

I suspect many of us are feeling the same way right now, after our long, somewhat hard winter. And this brooding forms the background for my story today, much as the dark, foreboding clouds in the background of the photograph above nonetheless frame the cherry blossoms of spring’s promise.

It was last Friday evening that I found myself, weighted down with all of these cares, settling down onto a hard wooden pew at the back of West Point Grey United Church to hear a concert presented by the Vetta Chamber Music Series.

The very first piece on the program was Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, performed by VSO Associate Concertmaster Joan Blackman and pianist Kenneth Broadway.

Do you remember how many times you’ve heard the Spring Sonata performed live? After a lifetime spent immersed in music, I’ve heard this piece performed maybe eight times in all.

The truly remarkable thing about Beethoven is that, just as Shakespeare invented our concept of the modern, self-questioning and self-referential human, Beethoven was the first composer to make common man the central actor in his own drama. To do this, he invented a new language of emotional expressivity capable of conveying all of the mixed emotions and very human conflicts and complexities with which we are, as modern humans, all too familiar.

After a century of music that praised the Gods and Kings and Nobles – simple morality plays with predictable sentiment and nice neat endings – Beethoven started telling the story of messy humanity itself, with all of its variations – sometimes raucous, sometimes transcendent, as in the exquisitely beautiful adagio of the Spring Sonata.

I don’t know how he first conceived of something that had never existed before, but somehow Beethoven, writing back in the 19th century, encompassed me in his thoughts, with all of my 21st century concerns …

The performance that night was one of the most perfect renditions of that sonata I’ve heard. Joan Blackman has a gorgeous sound (and violin to match), and brought so much nuance and innate musicality to the piece that it was a perfect performance. As to Ken Broadway, this was Beethoven that only a musician steeped in years living in Germany could produce, and music-making of the highest order. Seamless, conversational, free, musical in every sense of that word and seemingly effortless …

As a violin student at UVic, I struggled with this sonata for many years. I know how hard every phrase is, how awkward Beethoven’s writing for the violin, how fragmented and difficult to find the long phrasing necessary to its success, and I marvel at the ability to go so far with emotional content that the work is capable of enfolding an entire audience’s thoughts, worries and dreams in its contours …

That was the performance I went to on Friday, weighted down with my own particular concerns. I left restored, renewed, reconnected with something greater than my own parochial world, reminded yet again why music is my religion and concert halls my cathedrals. This is where I touch something true and eternal and pure and where I draw the sustenance that makes everything else possible.

Beethoven was a genius of a Shakespearean order. Right here in Vancouver, Joan Blackman and Kenneth Broadway are two of the very few artists in the world capable of capturing and expressing that genius in a way that makes us thrill to be alive in the hearing.

Thanks to them, it’s Spring!