Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) will celebrate its 45th anniversary on Monday June 2. 

That day, a special online photo gallery will be available at http://www.nac-cna.ca to mark this milestone. Later on Canada Day, as part of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Canada History Week, the public will be able to visit a free exhibition in the NAC’s Southam Hall foyer featuring rare photographs and memorabilia from the past 45 years.

“From the beginning, the National Arts Centre has belonged to all Canadians,” said Peter Herrndorf, CEO of the NAC. “Today they can be proud of what this organization has become: a national stage for Canada’s most talented artists and an extraordinary showcase for the best in the performing arts. And we’ve done it all these years thanks to the vision of the NAC’s brilliant, artistic leadership.”

At 45, the National Arts Centre is enjoying one of its most productive and successful periods ever. The NAC now collaborates with a significant number of Canadian artists and arts organizations, acting as a catalyst for performance, creation and learning across the country, and, thanks to the NAC Foundation, has raised more than $80 million over the last 12 years from thousands of donors and sponsors. 

Earlier this year, the NAC unveiled its “Road to 2019”, an exciting series of significant events and milestones leading up to its 50th anniversary. Key projects on that road include:

• The NAC Orchestra’s Performance and Education Tour of the United Kingdom, led by Maestro Pinchas Zukerman, in October 2014 to commemorate the First World War Centenary. The tour will feature His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales as Royal Patron, and a double performance with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, as well as a concert at the Salisbury Cathedral where Canadian troops trained in 1914;

• Ontario Scene, the seventh in a series of biennial multidisciplinary festivals celebrating artists from different regions of the country, which will showcase hundreds of Ontario artists at the NAC and in venues across the National Capital in the spring of 2015;

• The Canada Scene festival, celebrating Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017 and showcasing hundreds of artists in a magnificent expression of Canadian culture. Canada Scene will feature new works by our country’s most important artists, and collaborations with arts organizations across Canada;

• The National Arts Centre’s 50th anniversary year in 2019, featuring remarkable performances and major artistic projects with artists and arts organizations from across Canada;

This next five years will build on the outstanding, national achievements of the NAC over the last decade. For example:

• The recommitment of the NAC Orchestra to touring domestically and internationally, most recently to Atlantic Canada (2011), Northern Canada (2012), China (2013), and the United Kingdom (2014);

• The NAC Scene festivals led by Producer and Executive Director Heather Moore, which celebrate artists from Canada’s regions, and help those artists secure new engagements through exposure to presenters from all over the world;

• Theatre giants Denis Marleau, Wajdi Mouawad and now Brigitte Haentjens have all created a national stage as artistic directors for NAC French Theatre;

• The addition of NAC Presents to the NAC’s core programming streams, which, under the leadership of Simone Deneau, showcases emerging and established artists in contemporary music on the NAC’s national stage;

• NAC English Theatre and French Theatre’s co-productions with theatre companies from all over Canada and beyond, from Neptune Theatre in Halifax to the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, to the Royal Shakespeare Company (U.K.) for The Penelopiad.  French Theatre co-production partners include Robert Lepage’s Ex Machina (Quebec) to Momentum (Montreal), as well as being one of many international partners for La réunification des deux Corées by the internationally acclaimed theatre artist Joël Pommerat.

• Honouring the lifetime achievements of Canadian artists, arts volunteers and philanthropists through the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Gala, produced for the last 10 years by Executive Producer Kari Cullen and supported through fundraising by Jayne Watson’s NAC Foundation team;

• A renewed focus on growing Aboriginal performing arts repertoire and nurturing talent by commissioning, creating, producing, and showcasing original Aboriginal works such as the recent all-Aboriginal King Lear and choreographer’s Michael Greyeyes’ A Soldier’s Tale (a co-production with NAC Dance and The Canada Dance Festival), by producing the Northern Scene Festival, and by co-producing The Summit – Meditations on an Indigenous Body of Theatrical Work in Canada, a three-day conversation at the Banff Centre led by Indigenous artists from Canada and Australia.

• The NAC’s annual Summer Music Institute founded by Pinchas Zukerman, which, since 1999, has brought together in Ottawa more than 1,000 gifted young classical artists from across Canada and around the world to study with a prestigious international faculty;

• The re-establishment of the NAC’s Resident English Theatre Company, an accomplishment of former NAC Artistic Director Peter Hinton, and continued by his successor, Jillian Keiley;

• NAC Dance’s commitment to co-production, led by Executive Producer Cathy Levy, enabling Canadian dance companies to create and perform exciting new work;

• The creation of the NAC’s nationally recognized work in Education and Community Engagement, such as the NAC’s Music Alive Program, which actively supports music teaching and music-making in hundreds of rural and remote schools in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nunavut;

• The creation of the NAC’s New Media Department, an international leader in distance learning through broadband video-conference technology, and that produces teachers kits, award-winning online arts education materials and podcasts that are downloaded more than 1 million times a year;

• The appointment of six NAC Award composers— Denys Bouliane, Gary Kulesha, Alexina Louie,  Peter Paul Koprowski, Ana Sokolović and John Estacio – who have or will have composed three new works each at the end of their five-year term;

• The creation of imaginative cuisine by the NAC’s Executive Chef John Morris, who has dedicated his considerable skill and talent to have the NAC make an impact as “Canada’s table”. 

A virtual who’s who of some of Canada and the worlds most talented artists have performed on the NAC’s stages over the years. They include, Karen Kain, Rudolf Nureyev, August Schellenberg, Pinchas Zukerman, Leonard Cohen, Ginette Reno, Jean Gascon, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Yo-Yo Ma, Evelyn Hart, Albert Millaire, Tony Bennett, Count Basie, Renée Fleming, Jean-Louis Roux, Kate Reid, the Tragically Hip, Angela Hewitt, Robbie Robertson, Édouard Lock, Louise Lecavalier, Wajdi Mouawad, Gustavo Dudamel, Gilles Vigneault, Akram Khan, Wynton Marsalis, Gordon Lightfoot, Tanya Tagaq and Robert Lepage, and many, many more. 

ABOUT THE NAC

The National Arts Centre collaborates with artists and arts organizations across Canada to help create a national stage for the performing arts, and acts as a catalyst for performance, creation and learning across the country. A home for Canada’s most creative artists, the NAC strives to be artistically adventurous in each of its programming streams – the NAC Orchestra, English Theatre, French Theatre and Dance, as well as the Scene festivals and NAC Presents, which showcase established and emerging Canadian artists. The organization is at the forefront of youth and educational activities, offering artist training, programs for children and youth, and resources for teachers in communities across Canada. The NAC is also a pioneer in new media, using technology to teach students and young artists around the globe, by creating top-rated podcasts, and providing a wide range of NAC Orchestra concerts on demand. The NAC is the only bilingual, multidisciplinary performing arts centre in Canada, and one of the largest in the world.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Rosemary Thompson,
Director, Communications and Public Affairs
National Arts Centre
613 947-7000 x260
rthompson@nac-cna.ca

Carl Martin
Communications
National Arts Centre
613 947-7000 x560
Cell: (613)291-8880
carl.martin@nac-cna.ca