Festival Pontiac Enchanté a family affair

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Classical pianist Carson Becke hosts music fest in Luskville farm | Ottawa Citizen
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Festival Pontiac Enchanté a family aﬀair
HATTIE KLOTZ
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Published on: July 17, 2014 | Last Updated: July 17, 2014 12:15 PM EDT
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Carson Becke, left, shown with his brother Tait, has been programming a summer music festival for several years now, in the hay loft of his parents' farm, which is acoustically fabulous
and is frequently used for recording projects by musicians from near and far. This year's focus of Festival Pontiac Enchanté, which takes place July 18 to July 20, is the music of Richard
Strauss in celebration of his 150th birthday.
Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen
When Carson Becke’s parents moved to a large horse farm at Luskville, just outside Aylmer seven years ago,
the classical pianist wondered if they’d lost their minds. But it was a decision that has returned benefits for
Becke in so many ways, notleast in the transformation of an old hay loft into a fabulous studio, recording
http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/local-arts/festival-pontiac-enchante-a-family-affair
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and performance space where the 25-year-old now programs his own summer music festival that draws
people from far and wide.
This year’s focus of Festival Pontiac Enchanté, which began July 18 and runs to July 20, is the music of the
young Richard Strauss. Becke, who is studying at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, has gathered a group of five
young musicians in the early stages of their careers, to record three CDs of lieder (19th-century German art
songs), chamber music and piano music.
“I chose to focus on Strauss this year because it’s the 150th anniversary of his birth and very little has been
done with his early work. It will also be the topic of my thesis next year at Oxford.” The CD of lieder will be
launched at the festival.
Festival Pontiac Enchanté takes place at Farm of the Mountain, a well-known equestrian training facility owned by Peter Becke and Deborah Bradley.
These same concerts will be repeated in Oxford at the Hollywell music room — the oldest concert hall in the
world — at the Purcell School of Music in London and in Berlin at the Salon Christophori.
Becke’s voice collaborator on the project is Wallis Giunta, 28, another exceptionally talented Ottawa native
who now lives in New York. Giunta, whose father was a DJ for Chez 106 Rock FM and one of the founders of
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Galaxie, is a mezzo-soprano who has performed around the world, including the Met in New York, Roy
Thomson Hall in Toronto, Boston, Dublin, Paris and Taipei. She’s just recorded her first CD with Naxos, in
Ireland and will return to Ottawa for performances at the NAC and with Opera Lyra three times in the next
year. She’s been performing there since she was 11, first with the Ottawa Children’s Choir and subsequently
the chorus of Opera Lyra. She is also the face of David McCaffrey Haute Couture, a wedding dress designer
in Ottawa.
Wallis Giunta will be performing at Festival Pontiac Enchanté this weekend.
Michael Edwards / handout
“It’s a magical place,” she says of the loft. “I do generally feel a connection to any place that is not urban and
I’m at ease in proximity to animals, especially in a beautiful, unspoiled environment.”
While Becke tickles the ivories above and Giunta fills the room with her powerful voice, high-quality
competition horses munch their hay in the stalls below. Mismatched chairs, old sofas and a couple of repurposed church pews give a relaxed feel to the experience as the music dissipates into the Gatineau Park.
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Tait Becke, left, and brother Carson Becke, will perform at Festival Pontiac Enchanté this weekend.
“The Venturing Hills concert studio is an amazing place to perform,” says Becke. “It is big enough that the
music can be really grand, but small enough that it loses no intimacy in the connection between musicians
and audience. It’s the perfect balance between your living room couch and Carnegie Hall.”
Becke’s journey to professional musician and composer has been a surprising one. Neither of his parents is
musical. His father, Peter Becke, is a former Nortel executive and his mother, Deborah Bradley, a teacher.
He muses that the gift must have skipped a generation, tracing a path from his maternal greatgrandmother, Mary Mackey, who was a talented pianist, teacher and performer in Ottawa for 60 years. Now
Becke and his younger brother, Tait, a violinistéé, are focusing their energy on success in the world of
classical music.
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Deborah Bradley, mother of Carson Becke, sits outside the family barn with Oakley, the family dog.
Becke will be playing a concert at Chamberfest on July 27 and has been invited to apply for the Leeds Piano
competition in Britain in 2015 by its founder, Dame Fanny Waterman. He was recently selected for a master
class with Lang Lang, held in Oxford, broadcast live on three national television channels in China. St.
Hilda’s gave him a travel bursary to go to Brunei to play concert there. He’s won many prizes, including the
S.V. Rachmaninov International Piano Competition (Russia, 2006) and first prize in the BBC young
composers of the year competition. His composition John Keats: On Death has been performed in the BBC
Proms.
Becke never imagined that he’d one day be programming his own music festival.
“I had thought for a long time that it would be very interesting to run a series, but the horse barn and the
dramatic cliff-backed setting of this venture were completely unimaginable.”
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Rae Becke tends to one of the horses at Farm of the Mountain, her family farm in the Luskville area.
Festival Pontiac Enchanté
What: Three concerts in celebration of the 150th birthday of Richard Strauss. Carson Becke has gathered
five young musicians to record three CDs of lieder (19th-century German art songs), chamber music and
piano music. Featuring Carson Becke (piano), Wallis Giunta (mezzo-soprano), with Tait Becke
(violin), Nathaniel Anderson-Frank, (violin), Ella Rundle (cello), Won-hee Lee (viola)
When: July 18 to July 20
Directions: Located at the Farm of the Mountain property, a well-known equestrian training facility, near
the Eardley escarpment between Champlain Lookout and Luskville Falls.
Tickets: 819-455-2574
Website: www.venturinghills.ca (http://www.venturinghills.ca) , www.pontiacenchante.ca
(http://www.pontiacenchante.ca)
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Festival Pontiac Enchanté a family affair

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