Event Details

Opened in September 2014, Queen’s University’s Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts is a professional arts venue that includes a 566-seat concert hall, a 100-seat studio theatre, a 92- seat film screening room, and music rehearsal hall. The Isabel runs its own professional performance series with diverse internationally renowned established and emerging artists, rents its premises to professional artists and ensembles, and hosts student and amateur community performances. The Centre is the only world-class concert hall in the Eastern Ontario region.

This funding is for the marketing of the inaugural “Virtuosi Festival”, a major new festival taking place October 16, 2019 to March 6, 2020 at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. The Festival will include a series of concerts by a diverse lineup of world-renowned virtuosi, ensembles and orchestras. Programming will include:

(1) “Orchestral Virtuosity” (Oct. 16, 2019): Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, Jessie Montgomery, and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy;

(2) “Prodigious Virtuosity” (Oct. 29, 2019): Leonid Nediak, Piano;

(3) “Chamber Music Virtuosity” (Nov. 7, 2019): Fine Arts Quartet and Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear;

(4) “Soul Virtuosity” (Nov. 12, 2019): Meesha Brueggergosman performs soul music by Black women;

(5) “Virtuosic Tour de Force” (Nov. 13, 2019): National Youth Orchestra of Canada and European Union Youth Orchestra;

(6) “Virtuoso Pianist” (Nov. 23, 2019): pianist Yefim Bronfman; and

(7) “Virtuoso Jazz” (Mar. 6, 2020): Branford Marsalis Quartet.

The 2019-20 season will also include regularly programmed series (Soloist, Ensemble, Baroque & Beyond, Kingston Connection, Jazz, Global, Childrens, etc.), and the third annual Human Rights Arts Festival.