It’s easy to spot Jeff Melanson on campus. He’s the tall guy with the big smile, who never forgets your name once you’ve been introduced, and who is eager to hear about your connection to the Centre.

“I wouldn’t be here tonight if I hadn’t gone to Banff, if funding for places like Banff didn’t exist.”

On the eve of her departure as president of The Banff Centre, Mary Hofstetter sat down to talk with Inspired.

I will always love Loulou the acrobat.

The film dialogue is barely audible over the heavy techno beat, and the overall effect is remarkably immersive and realistic. You are in that club, at that table, part of that conversation.

“I remember a story my Uncle Jack told me – a Dunne-Za creation story about how animals once ruled the earth and were ten times their size and that got me thinking about scale and using the idea of the antler…”

Four countries, 14 performances, three network broadcasts in just over three weeks.

There are days when it seems as though there is a new opera behind every door at
The Banff Centre.

This past summer, no less than three new productions were in active development at Banff — Lillian Alling — commissioned by Vancouver Opera, and co-produced by The Banff Centre, Air India — co-produced by the Centre, Ireland’s Cork Midsummer Festival, and Vancouver’s PuSh Festival, and The Last King of Scotland, a new work based on the award-winning novel and film about Idi Amin.

The Centre’s vice-president of programming, Sarah Iley, says there is a simple reason why the Centre acts as an incubator for so many new works — contemporary opera is an expensive and risky business, and the Centre is ideally positioned to help.

Artist Melinda Hunt commemorates the forgotten dead of Hart Island — New York’s City’s potter’s field.

The first recipient of The Banff Centre’s Raul Urtasun – Frances Harley Scholarship contemplates the end of time, and tests new means of artistic expression.