The Agassiz Chamber Music Festival was founded by cellist Paul Marleyn, the Festival’s Artistic Director, in collaboration with the University of Manitoba School of Music, now The Desautels Faculty of Music, in June 2000. The Festival is named after Lake Agassiz, the ancient and vast lake that covered large parts of Manitoba and parts of Alberta, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Ontario.
The Agassiz Chamber Music Festival has been instrumental in the presentation of the International Cello Festival of Canada in 2011 and in 2014 in collaboration with the Winnipeg Arts Council. In addition to performances of cello sonatas and concertos, both cello festivals featured master classes, competitions, outdoor performances, and premieres of cello orchestral works: a double cello concerto by Jocelyn Morlock in 2011 and a triple cello concerto by Vincent Ho in 2014.
To date the Agassiz Chamber Music Festival has premiered 15 commissioned works by Canadian composers and has performed an additional 72 Canadian works.
The Agassiz Chamber Music Festival provides:
•Learning opportunities with informal talks and interviews during concerts.
• Master class opportunities with esteemed performers.
• Performance opportunities for works of living composers in Winnipeg and Manitoba.
• A wide spectrum of chamber music masterworks and rarely heard compositions.
• Opportunities for emerging artists to present their work in recitals and to work with established artists.
https://www.agassizfestival.com
