BIGLAKE Festival

A rebranded Wellington Water Week returns

A festival with its initial concept themed around water, not least because Wellington sits right on the shores of a Great Lake, Wellington Water Week is back. Originally inspired by Sweden’s Stockholm World Water Week Symposium, festival co-founders Elissa Lee and Johannes Debus wanted to bring the concept to Wellington. In 2018, they created a festival about water, bringing attention to the precious resource, where many events were in some way connected to the great big lake Prince Edward County sits in. Having to take a forced break last year due to COVID-19, there have been a few changes this year. Firstly, the name has been retired because the festival and its creative founders have rebranded themselves as BIGLAKE Arts. Having grown and evolved, Wellington Water Week is now known as BIGLAKE Festival, with the 2021 version being labelled the Bubble Edition for reasons that probably don’t need explanation. “We thought we wanted to make something that was broader in terms of a name, but also encompasses still what we did,” said Lee. Along with a week-long festival, BIGLAKE Arts have expanded to other dates surrounding the festival with a jazz series of concerts and they also hope to continue expanding throughout the year.

Violinist couple Rebekka Wolkstein and Drew Jurecka will bring all types of dance tunes to SHED Chetwyn Farms at this year’s BIGLAKE Festival.

For those who enjoyed the very different concept of world-class music and art and creativity organizers brought to the village of Wellington for two years, not much has changed. Participatory food events and singing audiences have been left off the menu this year to keep things super safe, but what the BIGLAKE Festival does bring is an incredible variety of styles and wonderful artists to experience and enjoy. What Toronto-based husband and wife team, artistic director Johannes Debus (music director at the Canadian Opera Company) and executive director Elissa Lee (an accomplished violinist) have done is expand the festival beyond Wellington’s core. “It’s not different at all, it is still in the same spirit, same kind of programming and playful adventurous stuff, but, of course, it is a little bit different this year,” said Lee. Both 2018 and 2019 brought a stellar line-up of worldclass musical performances, children’s activities and shows, and a few inventive events, as well as carefully chosen intimate venues. Not too much has changed as the festival’s core aim is to bring to Wellington some of Canada’s finest artists in classical music. COVID-19 safety protocols have, however, brought some restrictions, so all the events this year have been selected with outdoor venues in mind with space for people to safely gather, preferably in family or friend bubbles. “We had to think of creative places, so we reached out to local businesses to try to find more creative spaces to put on concerts,” explains Lee.

The seven-day festival runs August 20 to 27, with events daily within Wellington, including the Wellington Heritage Museum, Wellington park (gazebo), the Lodge, and the Drake Devonshire. Other venues this year include Loch Mór Cider Company, Cold Creek Vineyards, SHED Chetwyn Farms, Karlo Estates Winery and The Grange of Prince Edward Estate Vineyards and Winery. Among the eclectic line-up are dance tunes at an alpaca farm, a candlelight concert in a big old barn on the Danforth, and a musical stroll through Wellington featuring four mini concerts at four surprise locations. There is jazz with a special wine tasting concert, and an intriguing once-in-a-lifetime sound installation that shouldn’t be missed. “Every single event has something unique and gives something different, and, of course, we have hand-picked fabulous performers,” adds Lee. While there are some high-calibre performers included in this year’s festival, this is a summer festival and also a family-friendly festival, and with its mostly outdoor presence, it’s not meant to be too serious, designed instead to be a relaxed, enjoyable and fun experience for all. Children are catered to in this festival with several kid-specific events, and also kid-friendly events, including one on how to learn about electronic looping and how to create a brandnew song (outdoors at the Wellington Heritage Museum on Sunday August 22).

“We are encouraging people to bring their children and actually come as a family,” says Lee.

Opening night begins at Cold Creek Vineyards on Friday (August 20) with brothersister duo Cheng2 with a “musical journey around the globe” in a magnificent old barn set amid the vines with Bryan on cello and Silvie on piano. On Thursday (August 26), Cold Creek Vineyards hosts Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a candlelight concert with Ilya Poletaev on piano and harpsichord. Programming on Friday (August 27) features “opera arias and songs inspired by wine, drinking, and possible results we all know too well.” A festival highlight, Champagne Arias can be discovered at the Grange of Prince Edward Estate Vineyards and Winery and will be a rare opportunity to experience world-renowned baritone Russell Braun who will be joined by pianist and wife, Carolyn Maule. Tuesday’s concert (August 24) with VC2 is a bring-your-own-picnic concert in an apple orchard on the lawn at Loch Mór Cidery. Bring a blanket and enjoy the “young, dynamic and hip cello duo” of Amahl Arulanandam and Bryan Holt. If Canada’s top virtuoso classical accordionist is more your thing, Michael Bridge, along with the shimmering Lake Ontario waterfront are sure to dazzle hearts and minds. Described as “a wizard of the accordion,” Bridge will play the Drake Devonshire on Monday (August 23).

While BIGLAKE Festival is centred on music and concert performances, organizers like to include something a little out of the ordinary and they have done just that again this year with Poème Symphonique. It runs daily through the week of the festival and is an intense experiential encounter. The sound event, where individual 10-minute slots can be booked, is a rarely-performed soundscape involving 100 mechanical metronomes. The 10-minute private indoor viewings are designed for one to five people to visit in a bubble at a time. Lee describes this fascinating and intriguing performance as “quite an intensive sound experience. It’s a really neat experience in an empty lodge with these frantically ticking mechanical metronomes, a hundred of them, ticking away,” she says. “It will be noisy, but as you listen longer, you will start to hear patterns of different things.” As a musician, Lee says it has been a relief to get out and play again. “We have all been silenced, the whole industry has been silenced and I think we feel it, but I think the public feels it,” Lee says. “People really feel the lack of meaning in their life sometimes when you don’t have the arts and culture involved and a part of your everyday life, and it’s that part of what’s essential.” For more information on BIGLAKE Arts and the BIGLAKE Festival line-up, please visit biglakefest.com.