Leading in arts down south and up here
Chris Lorway, the founding director of Luminato, is about to join a special (and controversial) club: Canadian arts workers who move onward and upward by leaving the country. Lorway has been named the new executive director of Stanford Live and Bing Concert Hall in California. So at the end of June, Lorway (originally from Cape Breton) will leave his post as director of programming and marketing at Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall. In July, he will fly away to his new job on the Stanford University campus near San Francisco. That raises the question of why Canada does not seem to offer a smooth path for arts leaders to make their way up the ladder to top positions.
The evidence suggests that an effective way for a Canadian to secure a top arts job is to spend significant mid-career time at a prestigious institution in the U.S.
Janice Price, CEO of the Banff Centre, worked at several arts organizations in Ontario before moving to the U.S., but it was her experience as interim president of Lincoln Center and then CEO of the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia that made Luminato’s founders recruit her as the founding CEO of Toronto’s daring and risky new festival in 2007.
More recently, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television has repatriated Beth Janson, who was born in Montreal, to replace the departing Helga Stephenson as its CEO. Janson made her name as executive director of New York’s Tribeca Film Institute.
I’m betting Lorway will be lured back to Canada at some point, but there are no guarantees.
Bing Hall, entering its sixth season, showcases top names in the music world. Among those appearing in the 2016/2017 season (which has already been fully programmed) are Yo-Yo Ma, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Joyce DiDonato and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
Lorway will program the 2017/2018 season.
After his five-year stint at Luminato, Lorway became executive director of Soundstreams, a Toronto music presenter that promotes contemporary composers, before moving to Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall. Awards postscript As I wrote earlier, diversity was the prevailing note at the annual Mayor’s Arts Award Lunch last week. My focus was on three big prizes.
But there was a fourth winner who deserves attention, especially because his career has emphasized the union of culture and diversity in this city.
David Buchbinder is this year’s winner of the William Kilbourn Award for the Celebration of Toronto’s Cultural Life.
A writer, teacher and member of Toronto City Council, Kilbourn, who died in 1995, also served as president of the Toronto Arts Council more than three decades ago. The $5,000 prize named for him is given every second year to someone who celebrates the arts in this city.
“Original cross-cultural creation seems to sneak into everything I do,” says Buchbinder, a Juno-winning trumpeter and composer. He is best known as the founding artistic director of the Ashkenaz Festival.
He also founded the urban transformation organization Diasporic Genius. Other Buchbinder projects have included the Flying Bulgars, Nomadica, Odessa/Havana and the David Buchbinder Jazz Ensemble.
In his warmly applauded acceptance speech, Buchbinder said, “Let us celebrate the gifts we have been given by this land on which we stand, by its first inhabitants, by our own ancestors, by the many overlapping communities to which we belong and by the cultures of the world, which have come together in this place, in this time.
From all of this — and the spark of creativity we all share — let us build our city.”
With a platform like that, maybe he should run for mayor. mknelman@thestar.ca