Osprey Arts Centre making plans for summer festivals
Two outdoor music festivals being organized by the Osprey Arts Centre will be returning to the Shelburne historic district this summer.
Planning is well underway for the weekly Lawn Chair Festival initiated last year, and also the third annual Ancient River Festival, says Jay Pilzer, chair of the Osprey board of directors.
“The Lawn Chair Festival was very well attended and the Ancient River Festival with Lennie Galant was hugely successful,” said Pilzer. “We had a songwriters circle for two days prior with him," – and that event sold out.
Both festivals were held at the open air Guild Hall, with the exception of the songwriter’s circle which was held inside the nearby Osprey theatre where there was lots of room for social distancing, says Pilzer.
“The Ancient River Festival has become, over the last two years, a pretty big deal,” says Pilzer, adding the Osprey has some feelers out for headliners and performers for both festivals.
“We have a lot of neat stuff planned if we’re allowed,” says Pilzer. “We’re exhausted like everybody else. Trying to plan things when you have a theatre that you can’t use makes things difficult.”
Pilzer says in the past two years since the COVID pandemic hit – and he has been board chair – the theatre has been open a grand total of six weeks.
“So that’s a problem. Right now, if we follow the rules, we can get 38 people in the theatre. That doesn’t generate enough income to bring in a significantly expensive act. We had a wonderful kids program scheduled for March but it had to be cancelled.
The people doing it are coming from Quebec and had put together this little Atlantic Canada tour but nobody knows what’s going to happen so it’s very hard to plan,” Pilzer says.
The Osprey has been able to tap into federal government COVID funding, including two interest free loans and wage subsidies.
“We’d be dead without it,” Pilzer says. “Normally the income covers the performance fees but that can’t happen now. The government money has helped us stay in business.
Sponsorships and contributions from the local community have also helped, especially with the two outdoor festivals.
“The town, the municipality and local business have really stepped up to the plate to sponsor these events and make them successful," Pilzer says.
The Osprey was able to open the theatre last fall for six weeks, hosting seven performances and a series of
Sunday afternoon workshops before closing for the winter on Dec. 17.
“We tried to stuff in as much as we could in before we closed down,” says Marja Himmelman, the Osprey’s new executive director. “It was really nice to see people coming back in – hear how excited everyone was to see people again and see people perform.”
Pilzer notes there were some new faces in the crowd at the Osprey events last fall. “Whenever we’ve had events, we’ve had people coming in we’ve never seen before. The town has lots of new people of all age groups. Many people feel Shelburne is becoming a retirement community and that’s not true.”
The Osprey had been hoping to offer programming throughout the winter – maybe not as much as the summer and fall, says Himmelman – but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be able to happen this year. “The restrictions and people feeling comfortable about going out again we figured it would be best to hang off for this year," she says.
In addition to organizing the weekly Lawn Chair Festival and Ancient River Festival that happens in September, the Best of Boxwood and the Flamingo Dance Troupe are both booked to come to the Osprey this year.
“We want to do a film festival… there’s a lot of things we want to do,” Pilzer says, including bringing classical, jazz and hip hop performances to the theatre. “Our job is to expand the cultural horizons not just be another bar venue."
Himmelman says she is looking into the possibility of some virtual events for the Osprey. “We’re hoping we can offer more options, more variety this year. We’re all very excited to see what we can do this year and hopefully we can do everything we like.”