Membership in VSMF is crucial to the Festival’s ongoing existence and is now available for the calendar year 2021 (January 1 -December 31, 2021) by paying the annual membership fee.

VSMF’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) will take place in the near future,  and all members in good standing are invited to attend.

The annual fee remains the same as it has always been, namely $5.00, and payment con be completed through

this Canada Helps link to make the transaction.

Another option is to mail your $5.00 cheque to:

The Victoria Summer Music Festival Society

P.O. Box 5203,

Victoria BC, V8R 6N4.

This year’s AGM will be a virtual event – and the date, time, and co-ordinates will be announced in the near future to VSMF newsletter subscribers. 

We look forward to seeing our members (virtually) at our AGM, and to announcing plans for the 2021 Summer Music Festival when we are able to present them.

Please stay well and be safe.

Kieth Mullback

President, Victoria Summer Music Festival Society

We appreciate all of the messages of support for the Victoria Summer Music Festival that we’ve been receiving over these many months that have been filled with uncertainty, and we continue to hope for an abatement to the emergency situation..

Regrettably, the Victoria Summer Music Festival now has no choice other than to cancel all of its extraordinary “VSMF WinterFest 2020/21″ concerts. due to British Columbia’s  province-wide health orders.

Two options are available  to those who have already purchased tickets:

Donate the value of your ticket to the Victoria Summer Music Festival, in which case a charitable tax receipt will be issued to you for the value of your ticket. Please notify us by email by the end of business on Monday January 18, 2021 if this is the option you would prefer; and include your current mailing address in your email message. If we do not hear from you by that time, we will refund you the value of your ticket.

Obtain a refund for the value of your ticket.  If this option is chosen, no other action is required.

Again, please advise us by email by the end of business on Monday January 18, 2021 if you wish to donate your purchased ticket to VSMF as a charitable donation.

“The Festival earnestly hopes to return this summer and present concerts at that time”.

We appreciate your continued support and patience.

Please stay well and be safe.

Kieth Mullback,

President, Victoria Summer Music Festival Society

 

British Columbia’s new province-wide health orders are in effect until December 7, 2020 at midnight.

We are grateful for the careful consideration this situation has been given by Bonnie Henry and Adrian Dix, and our hearts go out to all who are suffering from the pandemic.
The effect of the health orders is that the “Winter Dreams” piano trio concerts scheduled to take place on December 4 & 5 cannot be presented atthis time.

Regrettably, the Victoria Summer Music Festival had no choice other than to postpone the “Winter Dreams” piano trio concerts scheduled for those dates. We are looking to reschedule those concerts for a later date as soon as reasonably possible.

We are also temporarily closing the box office for the January Beethoven series until the expiration of the current provincial health order.

We will do our best to keep you advised of the festival’s revised plans as we head once again into this very uncertain future.
We appreciate your continued support and patience.

Please stay well and be safe.

Kieth Mullback

President, Victoria Summer Music Festival Society

Dear friends: As most of you know, the Victoria Summer Music Festival was forced to postpone its 25th anniversary celebration due to Covid -19.   I and our Board know we are all missing the live musical experience and do not want to wait until the summer of 2021, so I am pleased to announce […]

It is with great disappointment that the board and artistic director decided to postpone our celebratory 25th anniversary concert season until 2021.

It was our heartfelt wish that we might all be together once again this summer, to experience some of the most wonderful music written. Indeed we are stillholding out hope that we may be able to present something, but in later in the fall and assuming that the promising progress of BC’s Restart Plan continues! Of course we can only do so if we are able to present wonderful concert experiences in a financially viable way, while keeping everyone safe.

In the meantime, we are actively exploring ways for the festival to stay strong and continue to serve the community. We are taking careful note of how other organizations are responding to this “new normal” with the goal of staying relevant in this “socially distanced” time.

We wish to express our heartfelt thanks to all our audience members, donors, sponsors, and government agencies (Capital Regional District, British Columbia Arts Council, and the Government of British Columbia through BC Gaming) for their long-standing support and encouragement of the Victoria Summer Music Festival.

We are very hopeful that the outstanding artists we had planned to present to you  this summer will be able to return in the very near future to perform again at our Summer Music Festival.

 

Thanks to all who made the 2019 Victoria Summer Music Festival such a memorable success! It’s the performers, the audience, and support from a whole community of individual donors, business sponsors, the CRD and BC government that have made it all possible – and will ensure a lively future musical future!

In a short time, we’ll be posting some our favourite photos of our five evening concerts and the daytime concerts we presented at Arbutus Global Middle School and Shannon Oaks Residence that were planned to reach older and younger audiences who might not normally attend our evening events.

Plans are already well underway for our twenty-fifth anniversary season in July and August of 2020.

Our newsletter of festival news is distributed to mailing list which you can sign up for by clicking right here.

The performers and dates for the 2019 festival have been set and the online box office is now open!

Brochures will be going out in the mail early in June, and you can join our mailing list to receive yours by clicking right here!

Thanks to everyone who made our 2018 Victoria Summer Music Festival a huge success.

We’ll be back in 2019 with a banner season of wonderful chamber music,  and will have more to tell you  about the performers and music they’re bringing for you in the New Year.

The VSMF 2018 annual general meeting will take place on the evening of Wednesday, November 21 at 7:00 pm in room B120, at the School of Music at University of Victoria.

Members of the Victoria Summer Music Festival Society are entitled to vote at this event.

Monday, August 13, at 7:30 p.m., we’re excited to present Korean pianist Minsoo Sohn, for our 2018 season finale. We’re welcoming him back to our stage after too long an absence since his 2013 Victoria debut. Much as he loved us and Victoria, he simply had too many engagements too far afield to return before now!

In preparation for 2020, when he will mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth by performing and recording the complete cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, Minsoo has devoted Monday’s program to works by that revolutionary composer.

Andante Favori, WoO 57

Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major, op. 53, “Waldstein”

Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat Major, op. 26, “Funeral March”

Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, op. 57, “Appassionata”

We found a lovely Soundcloud file of Minsoo playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations on his website. It includes the aria and first 2 variations, as well as Liszt’s etude #5 (La Chasse) of the Paganini Etudesand Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s famous Adelaide lied. You can click here to hear him begin with that lovely opening aria of the Goldbergs.

You can also see a Youtube video of Minsoo playing Liszt’s Paganini Etudes on his website, but we thought you might like to sample one right here!

https://youtu.be/K0V0l6zhS-M