On a recent trip back to his home community, Michael Falk had a strange realization.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I was with my\u00a0kid at Uptown Alley or something \u2013 very Winnipeg \u2013 walked out, and\u00a0all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Where are the mountains?'”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Falk has now been away from his home community for just over a year since taking over as director of music at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The veteran Winnipeg musician and producer held positions at some of the city’s most prominent venues and institutions, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Jazz\u00a0Winnipeg\u00a0and the West End Cultural Centre before taking on the role at one of the country’s most celebrated cultural incubators.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Learning new ropes\u00a0in\u00a0the mountains\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Falk reflects on his first year on the job, one of the biggest changes he has noticed in his workflow has been a pivot from presentation to mentorship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s very much about creating time and space for people to find what they need to find within themselves\u00a0by accessing our resources,” he explains. “I think that the curve for me has been about getting a better understanding about what a participant’s journey is like when they’re here, what makes a really good creative time for them that they’re\u00a0going to come out of this feeling like they’ve been able to level up, that they’ve been able to learn some new things, that they’ve been able to be challenged.”<\/p>\n
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The added challenge in that curve for Falk has been translating it to a swath of genres and musical traditions from classical to jazz to singer-songwriter and everything between and beyond. Within that, however, he has also noticed similarities in the struggles that\u00a0emerging\u00a0and\u00a0established\u00a0alike are facing, whether it be accessing resources or developing a core audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to make sure that we really incorporate some resources and opportunities for conversations around some of those career path conversations,” Falk says, adding that the centre is\u00a0also focused on nurturing the wholistic health of the artists who visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
RELATED STORIES<\/p>\n
Guided by prairie principles\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Falk continues to\u00a0champion the centre’s mission of artist development, he is relying on skills that he picked up not just as a leader in Winnipeg’s arts community but as a performer\u00a0in bands like Les Jupes and Touching.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There’s high artistic standards, but there’s also a really sincere care for the person,” says Falk, reflecting on the nature of Winnipeg’s performing arts\u00a0scene. “The artists and institutions… are very connective and community-minded, and I think that serves me well here.”<\/p>\n
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Manitoba’s innovation streak in the arts is something that Falk also highlights as a key trait that he brings to the Banff Centre’s programming. Under his tenure, the centre has created a new program called Fuse which is intentionally meant as an interdisciplinary collaboration for artists across disciplines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That sense of play that I’ve brought with me from Manitoba is pretty evident here,” Falk adds with a\u00a0smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a recent trip back to his home community, Michael Falk had a strange realization.\u00a0\u00a0 “I was with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-792930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}