2026 Vancouver Arts and Music Festival - Part 1

Photo by Paul Quackenbush

Now in its fourth year, the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival has become a much-anticipated summer event, drawing thousands to the city’s downtown - as it did again on August 7 - for a weekend of fun. Anchoring the festival is the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, which takes over a large portion of Esher Short Park by harnessing a very large portable stage to the bandshell for live concerts every evening. A very large sound system amplifies the orchestra so that all of the concertgoers, who are spread out over the lawn, can enjoy the music.

A bit of background: the VSO – through the foresight of its President/CEO and Principal Clarinetist, Igor Shakhman – received $600,00 from the Murdock Charitable Trust and other foundations to launch the festival in the summer of 2023. The funds helped to create a huge event that shows off the metro area’s arts, crafts, culinary, and cultural talents. Now the city of Vancouver and companies that are based there have jumped on the bandwagon to make sure that the VAMF continues into the future.

In her welcoming remarks to the overflow crowd at the opening this year’s festival, Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle jokingly took credit for the improved air quality. During the week leading up to the festival, the city had been blanketed with a smokey haze that came from wildfires, which had spread throughout Pacific Northwest.

The cleaner air helped to bring out another large audience, which was in a good mood and ready for an evening of music with the hometown band under its Music Director Salvador Brotons. The program focused on pieces that were made famous by "Fantasia," the iconic 1940 Disney movie that highlighted the antics of Mickey Mouse with popular pieces from the classical music repertoire.

The concert began with J. S. Bach’s “Toccata and Fuge in D minor” in an arrangement for orchestra by Leopold Stokowski, who led the Philadelphia Orchestra (1912-1938). The orchestra captured the spirit of the piece, but the woodwinds sounded a little weak at times, including a contrabassoon that sounded almost guttural. the outdoor venue and ambient noise from planes, motorcycles, trains, firetrucks and food trucks. Still, Brotons, got his forces to create a sweeping fortissimo to make a grand finale.

The orchestra evoked Mickey Mouse’s mischief with an energetic performance of Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Again, there was a bit of sonic competition from the surrounding area and a plane overhead might have contributed to the sound of the trumpet getting buried at the climactic moment near the end of the piece.

The “Polovetsian Dances” from Alexander Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor” swirled with elan, seesawing between the elegant and lovely dances for the maidens – familiar to many listeners because of the “Stranger in Paradise” tune from the musical “Kismet”– and the rough and boisterous dances for the boys and men. It would be great to hear this piece done with singers to get the full effect some day in the future.

After intermission, the orchestra returned to its Fantasia-inspired theme by playing Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” and gave it a lively account so that even the quietest passages could be heard. That piece contrasted well with the delicate “Dance of the Hours” from Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera “La Gioconda.” The tune was instantly recognizable to listeners of a certain age who can recall Allen Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!,” which put a smile on a lot of faces.

The brass sections really got to strut their stuff and delivered all of the goods with a rousing rendition of John Williams “Star Wars Suite.” It revved up the audience and sent everyone home in a good mood. Some did stay a bit longer so that they could watch a “Fantasia” on a large screen in another part of the park. That was a nice way to wrap things up.