By Robert Todd
Julian Armour radiates excitement as he presents a slideshow of the concert hall he hopes will soon animate a tired Elgin Street corner.
Clicking through pages of architectural sketches on his laptop computer, the Ottawa musician and administrator looks like a man showing off his dream home.
The hall would, after all, house the Ottawa Chamber Music Society, Armour being the artistic and executive director. It would also be used by other music groups and for speeches, radio and TV broadcasts, CD and DVD recordings, and film screenings.
Its construction was backed by city council last October and would be the culmination of Armour’s life work. It wouldn’t be his only great accomplishment though.
The French government named him a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002. The following year he was given the Meritorious Service Medal by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. The Ottawa Chamber Music Society has also won the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts several times.
For now, however, his new project, the world-class 925-seat hall, is reality only on a computer hard drive.
Armour will soon lead a fundraising campaign to add private donations to what has tentatively been promised by the City of Ottawa. The federal and provincial governments will have to add to the private donations and the city’s contribution to cover the $22-million price tag.
If Armour’s dream is realized, Centretown residents and Ottawa cultural groups will have the cello to thank for their delight. The mysterious tone of that instrument has inspired Armour throughout his illustrious career.
“Everything has derived from wanting to make music under the best possible circumstances,” he says.
Armour, 43, tried many instruments from a young age. He was captivated by sounds and riveted by an old harmonium his parents kept. But the cello, which he started playing in his early teens, was the first he laboured over.
“The cello I thought had just such a gorgeous, deep, rich beautiful sound. I heard that and I said, ‘I want to make sounds like that,’” he says from his office on Isabella Street, which overlooks the Queensway and, sadly, is filled by the annoying hum of mid-day traffic.
He loved the instrument, but didn’t plan to make a career of it. After high school he went to McGill University as a general arts student, studying music, history, economics and English literature. There, he used the cello to breakup tedious study sessions.
“If I was studying hard and my thoughts got a little bit scrambled, I would go and play for half-an-hour or 45 minutes and suddenly I’d come back and my mind was so clear, everything was so organized.”
After finishing his degree at McGill and spending years after perfecting his skills with influential cellists like Janos Starker, Armour struggled to find a place to play in Ottawa.
Ottawa music writer Richard Todd remembers getting a call from Armour in March of 1994. The struggling musician pitched an idea for a chamber music festival.
“To be honest with you I rolled my eyes,” says Todd, who was skeptical after a string quartet Armour had recently started quickly flopped. “I figured, here’s another crazy project.” But Todd got on board, promoting the concert with a series of articles in the Ottawa Citizen.
Armour’s radical idea, the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, now highlights a busy summer music scene in Ottawa. Chamber music fans from around the world now jam into the city’s churches each summer in what has become one of the best events of its kind.
“It simply wouldn’t have happened without him. Obviously there are hundreds of people that help, but he’s had to motivate them to make it work,” says Todd.
Armour’s impact has reverberated throughout the Ottawa music scene. Todd says Armour’s chamber festival has spurred on other festivals and encouraged the National Arts Centre to open its doors to summer concerts.
“The success of the festival has created a frame of mind among governments and potential sponsors that Ottawa is a festival centre,” says Todd. “Armour has brought a kind of energy and inspiration to the scene that the city would be much poorer without.”
He has, however, sacrificed much to improve Ottawa’s classical music scene.
He and long-time girlfriend Guylaine Lemaire, an accomplished viola player, have not vacationed in many years. Over the holidays they traveled a couple of blocks from their home on Besserer Street to the ByTowne cinema and saw a film. It was the first Armour had seen in over five years.
He’s had to shelve the bike he used to ride often and doesn’t spend as much time with friends as he’d like.
But he is able to squeeze playing time into his cluttered daybook, including two hours of practice daily. He performs in the chamber festival and as part of Ottawa chamber orchestra Thirteen Strings.
To fit everything in, he wakes up between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m., often working 12 to 16 hours a day.
Although he is full of energy, Sylvia Gazsi Gill, executive director of Thirteen Strings, says Armour rarely sleeps. He elects instead to stay up and work. He isn’t deterred by the hectic schedule though. The only thing that gets him down is the perpetual challenge faced by cultural groups – funding.
“I don’t like having to do things that I shouldn’t have to do,” he says. “It seems that every year there’s some new funding challenge. I would think that with our track record a stable base of funding would be guaranteed. It’s starting to get a bit tiresome.”
As this frustration suggests, Armour is a strong advocate of the role the arts play in society.
He struggles to understand comparisons between the need to have clean sidewalks and the need for a top-quality library, museum or concert hall.
“Culture is just not high on governments’ priority list,” he says.
“I find that very frustrating. The arts make us whole human beings. They help us reflect on who we are and help us strive for what we can be. They make us more creative, intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate as human beings.”
On a frigid Ottawa day, Armour makes an argument few Ottawa residents would dispute.
“It’s -30 C here today. People don’t have to live here. We need things that make it a great place to live.”
In the future, Armour would like to step back from his role as an administrator and concentrate on playing his music. How far back, he says, will depend on that plot of land at 150 Elgin St.
“The main goal is to get this concert hall going. When that happens, everything else will fall into place.”