Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Music: It's like Bluesfest but with batons

by Paul Wells on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 5:40pm - 0 Comments

A few blocks west of Parliament Hill in the nation’s capital is a mysterious site called LeBreton Flats, which Ottawa’s city fathers somehow forgot to develop. It is now nearly the last pristine piece of grassland in central Ottawa. Well, “pristine.” “Trampled” is more like it. Ottawa’s Bluesfest just wrapped up, with 350,000 people enjoying such much-loved blues bands as the Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips, Santana, Metric and Stars.

Now comes the quieter component of the summer’s activity. The National Arts Centre used to play host to a summertime Great Composers Festival inside Southam Hall at cut-rate prices, but even then ticket sales were soft. So in recent years they’ve preferred to put on free concerts at LeBreton Flats. Repertoire is resolutely crowd-pleasing, the evening sky is clear (knock on wood) and the price is right: all four concerts are free.

The NAC Orchestra carries the bulk of the workload, with concerts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday under guest conductor Edwin Outwater (his NAC debut; I wrote about him here). Friday they’ll play opera highlights, Saturday they’ll welcome tiny perfect singer Nikki Yanofsky, and on Sunday they’ll play Gershwin.

I’ll catch at least one of Outwater’s concerts, but I’ll also definitely be on hand Thursday when the Orchestre de la Francophonie canadienne performs under its founding music director, young conductor Jean-Philippe Tremblay.

Tremblay likes to work this summertime young-professional orchestra hard, simulating the pace of a real professional career for his young charges, and at the end of short, bustling summer tours he sets ambitious recording projects for them. Really ambitious. Last year’s orchestra recorded all nine Beethoven symphonies, to respectful reviews. Later this summer they’ll record Schumann’s four symphonies in concert. At LeBreton Flats they’ll play one of the Schumanns, plus a Beethoven piano concerto and a newly-commissioned piece from composer Andrew Staniland. It would be one of the concert highlights of the summer even if it happened under a roof.

Tags: edwin outwater, Jean-Philippe Tremblay, NAC

More by Paul Wells

http://intensedebate.com/profiles/mingwuphotos Ming Wu

It was a wonderful great 12 days that Ottawa enjoyed. http://photogmusic.com/?p=8313
http://intensedebate.com/people/tedbetts tedbetts

Paul you probably know a bit of the history, but is there any actual blues still played at the bluesfest?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Inkless Inkless

Yeah. Less and less. I don't spend much time complaining about that, however; everyone in town knows it's a general music festival, and everyone knows it's generally of very high quality (although Kevin Costner's band was pretty shaky). So nobody's getting duped. The transition to a general music festival has lasted more than a decade. I'm just about the only person I know who didn't go to the Arcade Fire show (I was out of town or I'd have been there too) so, again, nobody's complaining.

http://intensedebate.com/people/tedbetts tedbetts

On the contrary. Everything I hear and read is nothing but very positive about the festival. Emily Haines herself said that this year was the best.

john g

Agreed. I had a festival pass about 7 or 8 years ago and went almost everyday, but this year I only went one day, to watch Iron Maiden (who politely warned us that if we were looking for a "Bluesfest", we might be somewhat lost). My impression though was that "wow, this festival has grown up a LOT". It was almost unrecognizable from the much simpler version I'd been to, but in a good way.

CAPS

I would say that Bluesfest is one of the best festivals I have ever been too.

In fact, one of the best things is the number of beer stations. I would say that counterintuitively it probably leads to less drunkeness as people (with the appropriate wristband) can get a beer (or wine or pop or water) quite easily rather than waiting interminably in line and then getting six beer to drink right away. The food choices are great (a llittle expensive but not too much so) and there is a free water station so people aren't obliged to buy bottled water.

Oh yeah, the music is really good too.

Gaunilon

LeBreton Flats isn't undeveloped because "Ottawa’s city fathers somehow forgot", but rather because of its troubled (and very interesting) history.

It was originally going to be the site of the Rideau Canal, but was purchased by Captain LeBreton after he heard of the plan so that he could flip it for a gross profit. This infuriated the city, and rather than kowtow to his demand they built the canal where it is today at great cost since it now had to go much farther and had to be blasted through solid rock. As a result, Ottawa has the world's longest manmade skating rink and a beautiful canal with 11 locks.

Due to this fiasco, LeBreton Flats ended up being industrial land and then (after a large fire at the turn of the century) snow storage land for many years, causing severe damage to the soil (as mentioned above, it was soft ground, which is why it was originally chosen for the canal) such that development there today is highly expensive and not conducive to private efforts. That is why pretty much the only things out there are the War Museum and free NAC concerts.

CAPS

Thanks Gaunilon. Do you know if there is any connection to Senator Marjory LeBreton?
McC

There was also a lot of housing there which the National Capital Commission expropriated and razed in the 60s in the name of Urban Renewal.

PS, I don't think that "The City" chose the present route of the Canal as you suggest.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Gaunilon Gaunilon

Well ok, Lord Dalhousie.

http://ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa David Reevely

The NCC expropriation in the '60s is the big reason the land hasn't been used until the last few years. The area was considered a slum, with tenement housing mixed in with light industry like scrapyards and bakeries — now we'd call it a vibrant mixed-use neighbourhood, but at the time it was thought to be unbefitting a parcel of land that you can see from the top of the Peace Tower. Lots of the people who lived there ended up moving to Alta Vista, which was a new neighbourhood on the edge of town at the time.

They were going to build a massive Hull-style government complex on the site but literally just never got around to it (that might actually have been worse than leaving it fallow for 40 years) and now the land's being sold in chunks for condos and whatnot, with some official uses like the war museum and its grounds mixed in.
Dave

I don't think the city was in any place to be infuriated, since the city didn't exist until the triggering event of its existence — the construction of the Rideau Canal — um, existed.

The city fathers eventually remembered to allow Lebreton Flats to be developed, then the federal government remembered to expropriate the whole area in the name of some Radiant Garden City Beautiful nonsense, and then forgot to do anything with their expropriated prize for fifty years. The National Capital Commission: your tax dollars at work, Canada.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Ottawa_Centrist Ottawa_Centrist

I will be there at least for the Sunday Gershwin show!
Dave

Squeeeeeeeeeee! Gershwin!