Canada’s first classical music ensemble dedicated to diversity, discovery and dissemination is coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake for a Music Niagara Festival performance at Ironwood Cider House.
Executive director Allison Migeon and her partner, artistic director Brandyn Lewis, founded Ensemble Obiora in Montreal in 2021. It was born out of the experience they both had being one of very few, if any, people of coiour during their careers in the arts.
“Brandyn as a performer, and me as an administrator,” Migeon tells The Local, a sister publication of ThoroldToday, “we always felt that it was hard to find people of diverse backgrounds in the classical music industry. We started to think about how we could change things, and after a while we just decided to found our own ensemble.”
The pair chose the name Obiora, meaning “heart of the people” in Igbo, a language spoken in Nigeria. Migeon and Lewis then began recruiting musicians based on what she calls the group’s 3D principles of diversity, discovery and dissemination.
With their mission to promote musicians from diverse cultural backgrounds, increase their representation on the classical music scene, and to program unfamiliar works by composers of colour whose contributions have gone unnoticed, word quickly began to spread. Musicians of colour started to reach out to Migeon and Lewis with the hopes of finding a seat in the ensemble.
“We are unique in Canada,” says Migeon. “There are many in the US, of course. But our inspiration was the Chineke! Orchestra in England. We met the founder, Chi-chi Nwanoku, and she was very happy that we had the idea to do this in Canada. She had such great advice for us on how to start it.”
Obiora is now the ensemble in residence at the Université du Québec à Montréal, and boasts a roster of more than 45 professional musicians, most from diverse backgrounds. And their performances always promote often little-known composers whose music is traditionally overlooked by other orchestras.
“Obviously, we know all the traditional composers,” says Migeon. “We found so many other composers that do not often get programmed. Because of racism they were pushed out and nobody talked about them. We try to help people rediscover those composers.”
That is certainly the case with Ensemble Obiora’s program for this Sunday’s performance at Ironwood, where composers Jeff Scott, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Joseph Bologne take the spotlight.
“Coleridge-Taylor had English and Sierra Leone roots,” Migeon explains of the composer whose Nonet in F minor the ensemble will be playing Sunday. “He was famous in England in the 19th century. Joseph Bologne was a contemporary of Mozart from Guadaloupe, whose mother was a slave. His father sent him to France to study music. But when Napoleon reestablished slavery in France his music was forbidden.”
Bologne, a skilled violinist and fencer named by King Louis XV as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, is today often referred to crudely as “the Black Mozart”. The 2022 film Chevalier, starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. as the composer, dramatized Bologne’s life as an undefeated swordsman and colonel of his own regiment that fought in the French Revolution. Ensemble Obiora will be playing Bologne’s Symphony in G major, Op.11, No.1, a work in three movements, an excellent example of the cosmopolitan French symphonic style.
Finally, contemporary composer Jeff Scott’s Startin’ Sumthin’ will give the ensemble’s woodwinds an opportunity to showcase their talents.
In addition to including musicians of colour and presenting the works of long-ignored composers, Migeon stresses that community work is an important part of Obiora’s mission.
“We are trying to reach new audiences,” she says. “Some people love classical music but find it hard to go to a concert hall because they feel they don’t belong. We do a lot of workshops for students in school and remain very active in the community. It’s important for young musicians to see people who look like them playing this music.”
Migeon says in the short two years of Obiora’s existence they’ve experienced great support wherever they have played in Quebec and Ontario. But they continue to break down barriers as they spread their wings.
“In Montreal, we are accepted so well because people are very aware of diversity and inclusion,” Migeon explains. “But it’s more difficult when we try to go to some other areas of Quebec, where they are not so open about it. Some are afraid to program us because they are worried their audiences won’t like it.”
Migeon holds out hope that Ensemble Obiora’s 3D message of diversity, discovery and dissemination can be spread further afield across the country. And bringing eleven of the group’s musicians to the Music Niagara Festival this weekend is a big step.
“This will be the first time for most of the musicians and the team,” she enthuses. “We’re very excited to come and to enjoy Niagara.”
At least one of those musicians, Tanya Charles-Iveniuk, will be familiar with the area. Charles-Iveniuk, a former student of Music Niagara’s founder and artistic director Atis Bankas, will be in NOTL this Thursday with the Odin String Quartet as they perform only the final movements of classical and contemporary composers at Chateau des Charmes Winery, another unique Music Niagara Festival presentation.
Tickets for that show, and for Ensemble Obiora this Sunday, July 23 at Ironwood Cider House on Lakeshore Road in NOTL, are $40 each plus HST and can be purchased at musicniagara.org.
