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Established upon the fundamental tenets of Diversity, Discovery, and Dissemination, the Ensemble Obiora is young and vibrant orchestra dedicated to adding new voices into the Canadian classical music circuit. We spoke with founder and artistic director Brandyn Lewis about their upcoming performance.
Ensemble Obiora will play at the Maison Symphonique on August 19th at 16h15
PAN M 360: Thanks for taking the time, Brandyn. You must be busy preparing for the La Virée classique show. Has the ensemble played at the festival before?
Brandyn: Glad to be here. We played there last year, actually.
PAN M 360: And how old is the ensemble, in fact?
Brandyn: Just over two years. We started up in the summer of 2021.
PAN M 360: Wow, so during the pandemic?
Brandyn: Actually yes.
PAN M 360: That’s interesting. Perhaps you could tell us about that?
Brandyn: Yeah, sure. It was kind of the height of the pandemic and of course performances had stopped, things were at a stand still. So at that time my partner and I started looking at ways to build communities and connect with different musicians of colour. Because we knew that we were out there, it’s just that we’re all so separate and spread across different cities like Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and beyond.
I got in touch with some musicians I knew and we were discussing how we could really get this thing going. So we posted something on Facebook, describing our situation that we’re kind of starting out small and looking to form a concert in the summer of 2021. And, next thing you know, someone from the National Arts Centre reached out to us saying, like, hey we’re really pleased to hear of your mission here at the NAC, we have some leftover funds from our residency program, how can we help? That was amazing. It’s not a bad way to start out, you know.
PAN M 360: So did the onus to form Obiora come from your personal experiences navigating the world of classical music as a person of colour?
Brandyn: Well definitely, once I got more into higher education, I went to McGill myself, there were maybe literally five black people in the classical performance department at that time, and it felt like there were even less when I got into the profession. So we knew that this was a way for us to build something strong and. At the same time there are initiatives in the United States like Sphinx or in the UK with the Chineke! Orchestra that are doing the same sort of thing, and they have been for many years now. That got us thinking why doesn’t something like this exist in Canada, especially when we have so much diversity here?
PAN M 360: So is Obiora one of the first ensembles in Canada to do this kind of thing?
Brandyn: If we’re not the first I think we might at least be the first to do it on such a large scale.
PAN M 360: Amazing. I was at the Parc Lafontaine concert, and I could see people really loving the repertoire. It was my first time getting to hear Joseph Bologne, and I’m surprised it took me so long.
Brandyn: Hey, don’t feel too bad, because there are a lot of professional musicians who still don’t know him.
PAN M 360: That’s really crazy. But I noticed in your program for La Virée classique show, you’re playing some more Bologne material but also some Mozart and Grieg. They are not not exactly the most underrepresented composers out there. What was the logic there?
Brandyn: Well with the Lafontaine program, for the Camontoni series, they required us to play pieces that we’ve already performed. And my effort as artistic director is to program pieces that people don’t really know of, but are simply amazing. And so that’s why a couple of weeks ago we had such a diverse package of music to present. This time around with the Virée Classique, you know, we have to negotiate with the OSM and kind of talk about the repertoire choices and this year the theme of the festival is histoire partagée. It’s a little vague but Bologne and Mozart were contemporaries. They lived at the same time, and were both violinists. And I was even doing some research and they lived in the same house in Paris in like 1778.
About that Grieg piece in particular, it’s called the Holberg Suite after this intellectual named Ludwig Holberg. And the music itself is a nod to the Baroque Suite, like dance suites. So you have the Sarabande, Gavotte, Rigaudon, and things like that. You can kind of see how Grieg and a lot of composers in the romantic era and even the twentieth century were looking at the past and using elements of that music in a more modern context, that’s the shared history there.
PAN M 360: So would you say the classical world is generally receptive to work Obiora is doing? I like to think in 2023 attitudes have changed for the better.
Brandyn: Definitely but there can be a bit of a mixed response. I’ve noticed that the older generation tends to be more set in their ways. They kind of know what they like to listen to. And sometimes when I explain the mission of Obiora and the music that we perform, it seems to be such a shock to them in a way, because they’ve never had to question their place in society and culture. But when we do explain, they’re like, oh wow, this makes a lot of sense. And also when they listen to the music that we propose I can see the excitement and joy you get when you’re listening to something amazing for the first time. Seeing those reactions are really worth it for me, because we’re seeing things shift and change.
I think that even the younger generation that maybe isn’t as initiated to classical music wants to hear something different, you know? Because we obviously know that composers like Mozart, Beethoven and the like have dominated the classical music industry for the last 200 years, right? So I think that audiences are ready to hear different voices and to learn, you know, and it shows like just with the Parc Lafontaine concert, there were about 1,500 people in attendance. At the end of the day, we’re all there to play music, right? And so it shouldn’t matter what one skin colour is but with Obiora we have this amazing energy together and we just understand each other in a different way because of what we’ve been through.
PAN M 360: And so what’s in store for the future of the ensemble? You must have some exciting plans.
Brandyn: Well starting in October, we are launching our official season. Up until now we’ve just been doing little projects here and there but now we will have four concerts coming up of our own.
So October 14th, we have our opening night with the Venezuelan conductor, Glass Marcano, who has been making waves in Europe already. November 25th, we have a chamber music concert called Dancer on the World. For that one, the program touches on various dances that we find in various cultures around the world. The third one is on February 17th and that one’s called Influences with the guest conductor Daniel Bartholomew Poiser who is really well known in the scene here in Canada, has worked with the Toronto Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and I think also Symphony Nova Scotia. He is really amazing, an amazing guy and conductor. And our last concert is with Dinuk Wijeratne who is a contemporary composer and pianist who writes amazing music. He won a Juno in 2016 and we’re really fortunate to have him close our season. In between all of that we’re going to continue the series of concerts we did at Parc Lafontaine in the various Maisons de la culture in Montreal.
PAN M 360: As a young orchestra, I suppose you want to kind of make your presence felt.
Brandyn: Yeah, that’s it. We’ve been trying to gain visibility through different collaborations and really just connecting with the communities directly because we do have to grow our audiences. It’s really a strategy of seeing where our target audience is around Montreal and trying to make classical music a safe space for marginalised communities to come in and appreciate beautiful music.
