Highway 1: A Success Story

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We have wrapped up our first ever concert event outside of the Lower Mainland, the aptly named Highway 1 concert, and are very pleased to say that it was a successful venture!

We first began some initial discussion around having a concert outside the Lower Mainland approximately 1 year ago, feeling that the time had come to seek out new musicians in other areas of the province to collaborate with, and bring the music of BC Composers to new audiences.  In a fortuitous moment of timing, Ryan Noakes, one of our board members, was already in communication with members of the Chamber Musicians of Kamloops, having hired a string trio from their membership to perform at his wedding ceremony in Kamloops last summer.  He mentioned the idea to the trio, and they responded with great enthusiasm and excitement for the idea, which was quickly followed by an almost overwhelming response from the CMK membership as a whole.  And so, we had found ourselves a collective of very fine musicians outside the Lower Mainland to collaborate on a concert with, and the Highway 1 concert was to become a reality.

The usual hard work to put an event together progressed, and everything culminated last week with the concert in Kamloops on May 25.  We were very pleased to see a healthy audience, several of whom came in expecting to be “turned off” by the new music but instead were completely “into it” and enjoyed hearing all the new works.

We came into this “out of town” experiment with two main questions:
1. Can we find musicians outside the Lower Mainland interested in presenting an entire concert of all new works by BC Composers?
2. Is there an audience for new works by BC Composers outside of the Lower Mainland?
And of course, the answer to both of these questions has been shown to be a very definite Yes.  Overall, this has been a very positive experience for us, and moving forward with our event programming we intend to make the Highway 1 concert concept a recurring event, seeking out new musicians in new areas of the province to bring concerts of BC Composers to new audiences, possibly as a bi-annual concert presentation.

We wish to thank all the composers for contributing to this new concert concept.  And, a big Thank You to the Chamber Musicians of Kamloops and the Kamloops audience for making this new idea of ours a success!  We look forward to collaborating with you again soon.

Do you have any thoughts on where we should take our Highway 1 concert to next, or know some musicians in other areas of the province we could talk to?  Contact Us and let us know.