The Toronto connection

The Banff Centre’s connections to Toronto run deep. Banff Centre alumni play a leading role in Toronto’s arts scene – in dance, theatre, music, film, television, visual arts, and literature. The Centre has welcomed thousands of Toronto participants to its programs over the past 70 years.

Part of the fabric of Toronto’s arts institutions

Centre alumni play lead roles in the Canadian Opera Company’s (COC) Fall 2006 Der Ring Des Nibelungen, including Frances Ginzer (Brünnhilde), Adrianne Pieczonka (Sieglinde), Phillip Ens (Fafner), and Laura Whalen (Forest Bird). The COC’s General Director, conductor Richard Bradshaw, and production designer, Michael Levine are also alumni of the Centre. Over half of the members of the COC Orchestra are Centre alumni.

Two-thirds of the founding members of the Soulpepper Theatre Company are Centre alumni, including artistic director Albert Schultz. Michael Hanrahan, Diego Matamoros, Stuart Hughes, and Nancy Palk, and many other actors featured in the 2006 season attended Theatre programs at the Centre.

Banff Centre alumni are at the forefront of many 2006 Stratford Festival productions including actors Cynthia Dale (South Pacific), Diana D’Aquila (Much Ado About Nothing), Seana McKenna (The Glass Menagerie), and Nicolas Van Burek (Don Juan), and set and costume designer Susan Benson.

The Shaw Festival company includes numerous Centre alumni. Artistic director Jackie Maxwell, designer Louise Guinand, and lead actors Patricia Hamilton, Guy Bannerman, Lorne Kennedy, David Leyshon, Nora McLellan, and Wendy Thatcher have all participated in Centre programs.

One-quarter of The National Ballet of Canada trained at the Centre, including principal dancers Ryan Boorne, Heather Ogden, and Sonia Rodriguez, and soloists Stephanie Hutchison, Patrick Lavoie, Julie Hay, and Etienne Lavigne. One-quarter of the Canadian Stage Company are Centre alumni.

Over one-third of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) trained at the Centre, including Peter Oundjian, music director, and Gary Kulesha, composer advisor.

Some of our distinguished Toronto alumni and faculty include:

In opera, theatre and dance

• 2006 Dora Mavor Award winners including director Nigel Shawn Williams (The Monument), dancer Susanna Hood (She’s Gone Away), and director Jennifer Tarver.
• Tenor Ben Heppner
• Actors Eric McCormack (Will & Grace, Stratford Festival)
• Actress Fiona Reid (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, King of Kensington, Shaw Festival)
• Soprano Laura Whalen (Opera Lyra Ottawa and Opera Ontario’s Roméo et Juliette, the title role in Filumena, COC’s Götterdämmerung)
• Director and choreographer Kelly Robinson (Frobisher (2007), Filumena, Opera Lyra Ottawa’s Salome, director of creative development, Mirvish Productions).
• Artistic director Wayne Strongman, Tapestry New Opera Works
• Playwright and author Tomson Highway
• Artistic director Christopher House, Toronto Dance Theatre
• Director, actress, and drama teacher Tanja Jacobs, winner of nine Dora Mavor Moore Awards

In music

The St. Lawrence String Quartet, pianist Jon Kimura Parker, singer/songwriter Susan Aglukark, cellist Shauna Rolston, singer/composer Loreena McKennitt, singer/songwriter Molly Johnson, singer Patricia O’Callaghan, composer/writer R. Murray Schafer (2005 winner of the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts), and many others. Half of the awards given out at the 2006 National Jazz Awards went to Centre alumni, including Don Thompson, Dave Young, Mike Murley, and Phil Nimmons.

In visual and media arts

Veronica Tennant, former prima ballerina with the National Ballet, Gemini and Emmy award-winning television director, and winner of the Walter Carson Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts; as well as numerous winners of Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts including, sound and video installation artist David Rockey, artists John Oswald and Tom Hill, and video producers Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak.

In literary arts

Writer and actor Ann-Marie Macdonald, The Way the Crow Flies; author Rosemary Sullivan, Cuba: Grace Under Pressure; Roo Borson, winner of the 2004 Governor General’s Awards for Fiction and Poetry; journalist and social activist June Callwood; author Paul Quarrington, Galveston (1989 Governor General’s Award for Fiction); author Jane Urquhart, The Underpainter (1997 Governor General’s Award for Fiction); Wayson Choy, winner of the 2005 Trillium Book award for All That Matters; Maureen Scott Harris, winner of the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry for Drowning Lessons, and journalist Robert Fulford, among many others.

Published: Summer 2007.