The 2023 Lanaudière Festival kicked off on Friday with the 9e Symphony of Beethoven by the OSM under the direction of Rafael Payare. After a depressing summer of 2022 in terms of attendance, the Festival management has maintained the artistic course not without reason.
“The main thing is to be very clear about our orientations. We have to maintain our ambitions, but, yes, we have distanced ourselves from a certain number of projects that are too heavy financially or logistically,” recognizes Renaud Loranger, artistic director of the Festival de Lanaudière.
“To be very transparent, this year we will not present The force of fate of Verdi with Yannick Nézet-Séguin: it’s too heavy. This decision was made on the heels of the end of fiscal 2022.
In the eyes of the artistic director, “as part of the refoundation of the festival – the 180 degree turn made since 2019 – the only thing we miss is the recurrence of concerts with Yannick Nézet-Séguin aligned with his projects at New York. We are not there, but as you know, opera requires a lot of anticipation and, in the present circumstances, long-term forecasting is a big challenge”.
The handshake
The pandemic period has changed everything in the profession. At the height of the crisis, previously inaccessible artists were becoming available with only a few weeks’ notice in countries that had opened their halls before others. The planning and programming that was done years in advance often accommodated a tighter schedule. Some have taken a liking to it.
In the eyes of Xavier Roy, general manager of the Festival, it is important to resume old habits. “Planning two, three, four or five years in advance, which makes it possible to seek out contributors or sponsors for specific projects, has become more and more difficult since COVID. Renaud Loranger, and I, and the whole team are trying to lengthen the artistic planning cycle more and more to be able to provide the necessary funding for more ambitious projects. »
Even if new habits and customs now interfere. “You really have to be very honest about it: we haven’t gotten out of the problem, because the environment no longer works as it used to. Thus, we face a constantly diminished value of the handshake”, worries Renaud Loranger. “This year, in three or four significant cases, we found ourselves dealing with artists, even friends, who, late in the process, decided not to make the trip to Canada. I don’t blame them, but let’s just say it’s all sorts of reasons we didn’t come across before. »
In contrast to these new states of mind, the Festival de Lanaudière cultivates respect for the given word. “We have achieved 90-95% reprogramming; we have replaced everything that we had carried over between 2020 and 2022. This is one of the priorities in restoring Lanaudière’s credibility in the longer term than honoring commitments made. »
We understand that to replace a distribution of The force of fatein is not easy. “As things went on, the Ninth of Beethoven, which we had not given since 2007 in Lanaudière. You’ll find singers you don’t often hear in Quebec,” says Renaud Loranger.
Baroque bet
For now, the 2023 vintage is getting off to a good start. “One week before the start of the festival, we were two to three weeks ahead of the pre-COVID ticketing results, that is to say the very good year 2019. We are therefore miles from the last year, and we are very happy about it,” says Xavier Roy.
Even the persistence of the artistic direction to develop a baroque program is greeted by encouraging sales. “It’s a question of honoring the commitments we made between 2019 and 2021. And if we don’t bring forward a specific moment, the window closes”, explains Renaud Loranger, who considers that “at this At this stage of his career, it is important to work with William Christie” while specifying that “this does not announce a baroque positioning” of the Festival de Lanaudière. “The Garden of Voices is not Tosca with Yannick, but that brings us to something essential: we present artists, works and repertoires less popular in Quebec. Ideally, over a period that could exceed all of us, we create something that will leave traces and allow the public to broaden their horizons. »
Xavier Roy adds: “When we embarked on a strategic planning exercise, we returned to the foundations of the festival, which had been its strength from the start: very local roots, carried by people from Lanaudière, coupled with artistic ambitions extremely large. What Renaud Loranger and I always agree on is that reducing our artistic ambitions is not at all the solution. On the contrary, it is a trap. »
Xavier Roy sees himself in “an inverse dynamic”. “We are in development, which means that we are able to develop in terms of ticketing. We increased sponsorship by 60% and philanthropy by more than 60% on the sidelines of a fundraising campaign developed for a real estate project in downtown Joliette. We’re growing really big right now, and we couldn’t be if we were careful about programming. Ambition makes us attractive to contributors, to music lovers, to people who don’t necessarily know classical music, but who want to be interested in it: philanthropists, foundations, sponsors. »
Retention
As at Domaine Forget, we notice in Lanaudière the appearance of concerts at 4 p.m. on Saturdays. This is the result of customer surveys, showing that 70% of festival-goers come from the Montreal region. “What struck me in the recent interview of Duty with Matthew Lussier is that he talks about the problem in these terms: “Are people going to come back to the theater?” There has been a huge focus in classical music on audience development, the quest to constantly attract new audiences. But when you look at the figures, you realize that a concert attracts 50% of customers who are not in the database. So the problem may not be with audience development; it is about retaining the existing audience. From the moment we focus more on retaining the audience, we focus on motivating people to come and see the concerts. »
According to this analysis by Xavier Roy, “in the main barriers, the experience comes before the quality of the music. Of course, we do not compromise on quality. But the focus is on how to organize the concert experience; how to communicate around the concert; at what times to present it to offer the most open experience possible”.
At the same time, Xavier Roy is working on local roots. “This allows us to develop the particular flavor of the experience that we live in Lanaudière. We are migrating more and more from a “concert series” type program to the Lanaudière facility as a destination, where the public will live several musical experiences. The amphitheater concerts remain the flagship of all of this, but the church programming is increasingly linked to the amphitheater programming and, around this, we are programming more activities in unusual places, agritourism places, as well only free activities. »
In the eyes of the director of the Festival, “someone who comes to Lanaudière for a Saturday or a Sunday must be able to have several activities in one day to live a festival experience and discover the region. There isn’t a day on the weekend when there isn’t the possibility of doing two or three activities with us or our partners. An increasingly large network is therefore developing with the local environment, whether at the gastronomic, touristic or artistic level, which means that we will be able to enrich this destination as a one-day cultural getaway” .
This strategy will be endorsed in 2024 with the completion of the Festival’s new headquarters in downtown Joliette. “This will ensure a more sustained year-round presence in terms of programming and community involvement. And next year, we will have a satellite of the festival with a small performance hall in the city centre. »