The New York connection

The Banff Centre is part of the cultural heartbeat of New York. Approximately 100 participants from the New York area attend Centre programs each year.

Notable New York alumni and faculty include:

In music

• Dave Douglas trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and educator. Douglas is widely recognized as one of the most important and original American musicians to emerge from the jazz and improvised music scene in the last decades.
• Saxophonist Seamus Blake, who tours internationally with the Mingus Big Band, with guitarist John Scofield, and with his own band, Bloom-daddies.
• Sheila Jordan jazz singer and recipient of the highest distinction for female jazz musicians the Lil Hardin Armstrong Jazz Heritage Award in 2004.
• Kenny Werner world renowned jazz pianist, composer, and educator.
• Pianist and composer Fred Hersch, whose accomplishments include a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition and two Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.
• Jon Kimura Parker internationally acclaimed concert pianist.
• Bassoonist Stephen Maxym, who taught at The Banff Centre for 26 summer seasons. Mr. Maxym led a distinguished career as principal bassoonist with the Metropolitan Opera for 36 years and appeared under the baton of many of the notable conductors of our time.
• The Daedalus Quartet named by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to be the Chamber Music Society Two string quartet for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons.
• Gilbert Kalish, past faculty at The Banff Centre, Kalish is a frequent guest artist with the world’s most distinguished chamber ensembles and is professor; piano, director of performance activities; co-director of contemporary chamber players at Stony Brook.
• Many faculty members from the Music Division of The Juilliard School have spent time at Banff including Sharon Isbin, who created Juilliard’s guitar department; violists Hsin-Yun Huang and Heidi Castleman; composer Vivian Fung; voice instructor Dodi Protero; and flute and chamber music faculty, Carol Wincenc.

Notable New York alumni and faculty include:

In theatre

• Metropolitan Opera stars Ben Heppner, Richard Margison, and Michael Schade have all spent time as students at Banff.
• Kim Cattrall of "Sex in the City" fame, attended musical theatre at The Banff Centre in 1971.
• Eric McCormack who plays Will Trumani on NBC’s "Will & Grace", recipient of six Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
• Meredith Monk composer, singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, musical theater works, films and installations. In July 2000, her music was honored by a three-concert retrospective entitled Voice Travel as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

In visual and new media arts

• Dan Graham, considered one of the most successful contemporary installation artists practicing today, with work commissioned by almost every European country, and half of Asia as well.
• Laurie Anderson recording artist with Warner Bros. Records, poet, writer, visual artist, performance artist, and social commentator.
• A A Bronson, visual artist, one of the three founding members of General Idea.
• J.C. Hertz author of Joystick Nation.
• Kenneth Perlin professor in the Department of Computer Science and the director of the Media Research Laboratory, New York University.
• Anne Barlow curator of Education and Media Programs, New Museum of Contemporary Art.
• Marina Zurkow, multimedia artist and designer whose work has screened widely at festivals including Sundance, Rotterdam, San Francisco International, and the Super 8 and Video Festival in Brussels.
• Ken Jordan, digital multimedia consultant, co-founder of MediaChannel.org.
• Russian emigrant artist team Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, who were the first Russian artists to receive a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1981.

In Aboriginal arts

• Muriel Miguel a founding member and artistic director of Spiderwoman Theater, the longest running Native American feminist theater group in North America, based in New York.
• Kalani Queypo dancer and actor, whose film credits include The Royal Tenenbaums and The Juror, company member of Earth Dance Theatre.

Published: Summer 2007.