Brott Music Festival
Brott Music Festival presents annual classical, jazz, chamber, pops, multidisciplinary, and education concerts in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The festival was founded by conductor Boris Brott in 1988. The orchestra in residence is the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, Canada's only professional orchestral training program. Location. The Brott Music Festival's catchment area is the 905 WEST area and extends from the Durham region east to Metropolitan Toronto west to the Niagara region, and south of Hamilton to Haldimand-Norfolk. History. The festival began as a way to provide cultural activity during the summer months in Hamilton , Ontario, and was founded as a two-week summer music festival in 1988 by conductor Boris Brott. Its budget has increased from $50,000 to under $1.5 million, and it has become Canada's largest orchestral music festival. It is praised in music circles for emphasizing nontraditional and multidisciplinary performances. Brott draws musicians from across Canada. The orchestra in residence is the National Academy Orchestra of Canada, which is a training program for aspiring professional musicians. The NAO is the only program of its kind in Canada and is similar to the Orchestra of the New World in Florida . Brott's main activities take place in June, July, and August annually, but the festival also presents educational concerts for elementary students at Hamilton Place every autumn and three performances of Handel's "Messiah" every December. BMF performs in concert hall settings such as Hamilton Place, Dofasco Centre for the Performing Arts, Mohawk College's McIntyre Theatre and the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. It also performs in churches, including Christ's Church Cathedral, Melrose United, St. Christopher's Anglican in Burlington, West Highland Baptist, and St. John's Anglican in Ancaster. Other venues include the Royal Botanical Gardens, Dundurn  Castle, Whitehern Museum, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Boris Brott and educational programs. Boris Brott has been principal Education & Family Conductor at the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Music Director of New West Symphony in Los Angeles and the McGill Chamber Orchestra in Montreal. He founded Brott Music Festival in 1988 and the National Academy Orchestra of Canada in 1989. The festival re-introduced music education performances to Hamilton in 1999. Since then, the NAO has performed for over 144,000 schoolchildren from across southern Ontario. It is estimated that Boris Brott has introduced classical music to one million  children during his career. He has written over 300 scripted children's concerts, such as Welcome Bach, Meet Mr. Beethoven; Trick or Treat to a Wicked Beat; There's an Animal in My Orchestra; Boris the Explorer: So You Want to Sing?; and J.S. Bach Meets Glenn Gould. Brott Music Education Concert highlights over the past nine years have included: The second category is for middle school grades 4-8 and is based on curriculum worked out with teachers and arts consultants on the BMF Education Committee. These programs can be based around the life of a composer and often  feature an actor portraying Mozart, Beethoven, or Dvorak. Programming selections must contain excerpts of varying styles and colours representative of that particular composer. Programs inculcate contemporary Canadian composition since they illustrate the influence that specific composer may have had on another contemporary Canadian composer. Awards and honors. The festival received the Tourism Ambassador Award from Tourism Hamilton and Tourism Business of the Year (under 50,000). Boris Brott was awarded the Order of Ontario in 2006, Lifetime Achievement Awards from Tourism Hamilton and the City of Hamilton Arts Awards in 2007, and the National Child Day Award from the Canadian Institute  for Child Health in Ottawa in November 2007. In May 2006, he was voted one of the top five Greatest Hamiltonians of all time by readers of "The Hamilton Spectator".