Music to his ears

When Glenn Hodgins was named executive director of the Ottawa Chamber Music Society last November, the announcement was like music to his ears.

“I feel honoured,” he says. “I can feel how cherished this organization is . . . and I feel the intense responsibility for it to succeed.”

Under Hodgins’s leadership, the society is gearing up to its annual Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, also known as Chamberfest, which is billed as the world’s largest concert series of its kind.

This year, the society and music enthusiasts worldwide will celebrate the summer festival’s 15th anniversary with more than 110 concerts and events at various locations around Ottawa from July 25 to Aug. 9.

Hodgins says the festivities drew about 40,000 spectators last year and he hopes this year the response will be even greater.

“The international part of our name is well known because of the international artists who want to be here . . . but people outside of Ontario and Canada don’t know about this institution all that much,” he says. “We need to do a better job of getting the secret out there . . . people will make (the festival) a destination because it is an unbelievably good experience.”

This year’s events will encompass five or six concert slots every day and will be presented in about 15 different venues around the city, including several churches.

In this way, the festival is about more than just beholding live music, Hodgins says.

“Part of your experience is to see churches and locations you might not otherwise see. You drive by them but you don’t always have the experience of going in there,” Hodgins says.

Once inside, however, Hodgins says spectators can experience chamber music of the highest calibre performed by some of the most recognized local and international artists of the day, including Armenian-Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian in her first ever appearance at the festival.

Hodgins says the intimate rapport within the ensemble is what makes chamber music a delight to make and to hear.

“The feeling of playing chamber music is one of being in an equal and collaborative but supportive role,” he says. “I sometimes describe it as leading from behind. There’s this give and take . . . a synchronicity between players which, when achieved, is hugely gratifying.”

Hodgins says the term “chamber music” applies to little, intimate, collaborative works performed by a small number of musicians with the core repertoire built around the string quartet. Some of the most popular pieces, he says, include Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet and Pachelbel’s Canon.

“Anyone can hum that!” he says.

Though rooted in classical and romantic traditions, Hodgins says chamber music nowadays isn’t an exclusively European art form.

“Chamber music is about as potentially broad a definition as you could imagine,” he says. “We’re evolving into looking at other forms of what you might consider chamber music including world music and blends of jazz and classical.”

Hodgins, 48, says his own musical training began at the piano at age four while growing up near Scarborough.

“I describe myself as a chamber musician at heart. My mother is a very accomplished pianist and I grew up in a house full of music,” he says. “We had a nice instrument at home.”

Hodgins’s love for the piano led him to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music and later at the University of Toronto, where he received a bachelor’s degree in piano performance.

“The piano is a very fulfilling instrument,” he says. “It in itself can be a complete musical experience . . . in terms of harmonic satisfaction.”

After touring as a pianist in Ontario and Saskatchewan in the late 1980s, Hodgins held the position of director of operations with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto for 12 years where he organized the ensemble’s worldwide touring circuit.

“I really oversaw the organization as it grew from a budget of about $1 million to a budget of about $ 3 million,” he says.

The orchestra completed dozens of recordings, mostly on the Sony Classical Vivarte label, during his tenure there. Hodgins also met his soprano singer wife through Tafelmusik.

Before moving to Ottawa, Hodgins co-ordinated the touring and collaborations program at the Ontario Arts Council, helping bring touring artists and exhibitors to communities across the province.

When Julian Armour, the Ottawa Chamber Music Society’s founding artistic director, abruptly resigned last March after 13 years of service, Hodgins says he saw the job opening as an opportunity to combine his musical and administrative expertise.

“(Hodgins is) bringing an incredibly diverse skill set and intimacy with the Ontario arts base,” says Colin Cooke, president of the Ottawa Chamber Music Society board of directors. “He’s somebody who comes to the table with a really broad awareness of how arts organizations run and he’s got . . . an incredible array of connections across the country and the province.”

Cellist Roman Borys, member of the internationally acclaimed Gryphon Trio, says Hodgins’s thoughtfulness and varied talents make him indispensable to the society. Borys says the Gryphon Trio has been coming to the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival “from the beginning” and, this year, the group is in charge of the festival’s artistic programming, working closely with Hodgins.

“He’s a calm fellow, a good listener and a great communicator. He’s always been involved with success,” says Borys.

In addition to his musical and administrative knowledge, Hodgins’s extensive survival skill training has given him a tremendous sense of adaptability and teamwork, he says. He has embarked on numerous wilderness and canoeing expeditions both professionally and recreationally.

“I’ve done some trips on Baffin Island where I’ve had the unhappy experience of encountering a polar bear, which fortunately left us alone. In the tundra, bears are not your friends,” he laughs.

Hodgins says that roughing it in the bush with a team is not unlike the experience of playing chamber music.

“The closeness that develops over time in terms of challenges and meeting adversity brings out the good and the bad in people,” he says. “Your friends that you make through those experiences can become absolute lifelong friends.”

In his little more than three months as executive director of the society, Hodgins says he’s been completely run off his feet with work. Much of his initial effort was focused on securing funding for the proposed concert hall on Elgin Street.

“Part of my role has been to worry about how on earth we were going to make this happen,” he says.

After failing to meet the Feb. 28 deadline to raise the $38 million to cover the cost of construction, Hodgins says the Ottawa Chamber Music Society has stepped back from the leadership role in fundraising for the concert hall.

“The concert hall is a hugely worthwhile project for this community and I support it fully,” he says. “With the sophistication around acoustics, you can develop wonderful facilities and they don’t have to cost exorbitant amounts – $38 million for this project is a reasonable amount.”

Although the future of the concert venue remains in limbo, Hodgins says the society is focusing the majority of its attention on expanding its presence both locally and internationally in the build up to the summer festival.

“This is a fantastic community,” he says. “There’s a lot of music here . . . to have the National Arts Centre, the chamber festival, the choral society, Opera Lyra – this has got just about anything you could want to see and of such a calibre that it’s almost an embarrassment of riches, there’s so many opportunities. It’s fantastic and quite extraordinary.”