Brott Music Festival (formerly Boris Brott Summer Music Festival) presents annual classical, opera, jazz, pops, and children's education concerts in Hamilton, Halton and Niagara regions in Ontario, Canada as well as touring to other music festivals in southern Ontario. The festival was founded by late conductor Boris Brott and has grown into Ontario's only and Canada's largest orchestral music festival. The orchestra in residence is the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, Canada's only professional orchestral training program. It is also home to BrottOpera, a training program for Canadian emerging opera singers. Its current artistic director is Tania Miller.

History

The festival began as a way to provide cultural activity during the summer months in Hamilton, Ontario, and was founded as a two-week summer music festival in 1988 by conductor Boris Brott. Its budget has increased from $50,000 to under $1.5 million, and it has become Canada's largest orchestral music festival. It is praised in music circles for emphasizing nontraditional and multidisciplinary performances. Brott draws musicians from across Canada. The orchestra in residence is the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, which is a training program for aspiring professional musicians. The NAO is the only program of its kind in Canada and is similar to the Orchestra of the New World in Florida. BMF's main activities take place in June, July, and August annually, but the festival also presents educational concerts for elementary students at Hamilton Place every autumn and three performances of Handel's Messiah every December. BMF performs in concert hall settings such as Hamilton Place, Dofasco Centre for the Performing Arts, Mohawk College's McIntyre Theatre and the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. It also performs in churches, including Christ's Church Cathedral, Melrose United, St. Christopher's Anglican in Burlington, West Highland Baptist, and St. John's Anglican in Ancaster. Other venues include the Royal Botanical Gardens, Dundurn Castle, Whitehern Museum, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Festival highlights

Boris Brott and educational programs

The festival re-introduced music education performances to Hamilton in 1999. Since then, the NAO has performed for over 144,000 schoolchildren from across southern Ontario. It is estimated that Boris Brott introduced classical music to one million children during his career. He has written over 300 scripted children's concerts, such as Welcome Bach, Meet Mr. Beethoven; Trick or Treat to a Wicked Beat; There's an Animal in My Orchestra; Boris the Explorer: So You Want to Sing?; and J.S. Bach Meets Glenn Gould. Brott Music Education Concert highlights over the past nine years have included:

Awards and honours

BMF received the Tourism Ambassador Award from Tourism Hamilton and Tourism Business of the Year (under 50,000). Boris Brott was awarded the Order of Ontario in 2006, Lifetime Achievement Awards from Tourism Hamilton and the City of Hamilton Arts Awards in 2007, and the National Child Day Award from the Canadian Institute for Child Health in Ottawa in November 2007. In May 2006, he was voted one of the top five Greatest Hamiltonians of all time by readers of The Hamilton Spectator.