Music and Beyond festival set to return July 4 – 17!

Julian Armour

After two years of silence, Music and Beyond is once again offering a live festival, from July 4 to July 17, 2022. The festival will offer 50 concerts and events over 14 days. This will be Music and Beyond’s first public festival since 2019. Several concerts will be presented in Sandy Hill.

The COVID-19 pandemic created almost insurmountable challenges for many artists and arts organizations. In March of 2020, Music and Beyond pivoted quickly to virtual content and, so far, we have released over 300 videos on our YouTube channels. We have also launched a weekly television series on Rogers that goes into 200,000 homes in the Ottawa area. Over the past two years, we have only presented four live concerts. We are delighted to be finally welcoming people back to a live festival!

Now considered one of Canada’s major cultural festivals and one of Ottawa’s five major music festivals, Music and Beyond offers a wide variety of concerts including orchestras, bands, choirs, recitals, small ensembles, world music as well as many “beyond” events that link music with other art forms and cultural disciplines. As usual, the festival will present a broad range of top international names alongside some of the best Canadian musicians. The festival will also livestream some events and will film others for future viewing. The overriding theme of the whole festival is celebratory and uplifting music.

For the first time in Music and Beyond’s history, all concerts will require individual tickets to ensure carefully planned seating arrangements and make sure the audience is adequately socially distanced. A special “Festival Membership” ($50 for adults and $30 for students) will provide significant discounts on all tickets.

Festival Memberships and tickets to some concerts are now on sale. Artists include world-class sopranos Mireille Asselin, Hélène Brunet, and Jessica Muirhead; L’Harmonie des Saisons, winner of Classical Album of the Year at the Juno Awards this year; trumpet virtuoso Jens Lindemann; star pianists Lise de la Salle, Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, Ian Parker, Frédéric Lacroix, Carson Becke and Jean Desmarais; countertenor Daniel Taylor and the Theatre of Early Music; tenor Charles Daniels; baritones Jonathon Adams and Daniel Luis de Vicente; theremin virtuoso Thorwald Jørgensen; violinists Jasper Wood, Marc Djokic, Yolanda Bruno and Alexandre Da Costa (who just played for Queen Elizabeth as part of her Platinum Jubilee celebrations); cellists Cameron Crozman and Chloé Dominguez; the Orchestre Classique de Montréal; the London Handel Players; the Elmer Iseler Singers; the Studio Ancienne de Montréal; Thirteen Strings; jazz pianist Marcus Roberts; magician Chris Pilsworth; Cirque Fantastic; and many others.

There will be a significant amount of “beyond” content including circus, magic, film, and literature, as well as a number of events for young people including a day of music at the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum.

People can get more information and can purchase memberships and tickets by visiting www.musicandbeyond.ca.

Sandy Hill resident Julian Armour is the Artistic and Executive Director of Music and Beyond