Chestnut Hall Camerata





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The Chestnut Hall Camerata is a performing collective consisting of professional musicians, video and visual artists, poets, dancers and other disciplines based in the Waterloo region.

Its mandates are to produce collaborative music projects dedicated to creating a fresh interpretation of traditional works, and to foster the music of established and emerging composers.
 
To achieve this, the collective creates new performance synergies with contributions from other disciplines - eg. drama, dance, visual arts, spoken word, and across different genres.  The performance practices, styles and traditions of each performer are given equal voice, resulting in a fusion of styles with a dominant root in the classical music tradition.

The Camerata is extending the musical experience beyond the concert hall experience and into everyday life.  Through video and audio recording and the Internet, along with printed media articles, radio broadcasts, YouTube videos, podcasts, blogging and an interactive website, the Camerata is working to create an experience that fuses together live performance with these media, providing an intimate extended experience of its music that becomes a part of the listener's day-to-day listening.

The Camerata is building an audience base from traditional and non-traditional sources.  In addition to reaching out to the traditional classical music audience, it is targeting those in Waterloo region’s diverse business, technology, research, education and culture communities who are seeking an enriched concert experience different than what the traditional music industry has provided.

To assist its goals, the Camerata creates partnerships and synergetic associations with other organizations that share its goals of integrating the community music experience.

Artistic Director

Earl McCluskie received his classical music training at the University of Western Ontario in Theory and Composition, and recording training from the Tonmeister graduate program at McGill University. 

As artistic director for the Chestnut Hall Camerata, he has produced concerts including the Waterloo Region Choral Composes Song Circle in 2008, MICHAELMAS: A Numinous Feast for All Angels in 2009 (with co-artistic director, Daniel Cabena and nominated for a KW Arts Award in 2010) and A Mother’s Tale in February of 2010. 

As producer for Chestnut Hall Music, he has produced CD recordings for many musicians and ensembles, performers and composers including Juno-nominated Timothy Corlis’ Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written and Leonard Enns’ Nocturne from the DaCapo Chamber Choir award-winning release ShadowLand, the Wellington Winds, the Menno Singers, Greensleaves, Windjammers, Sandra Mogensen, Guelph Symphony Orchestra, Michael Purves-Smith and Kevin Ramessar, and live concert recordings for numerous ensembles and performers including the KW Symphony.
 
Beyond the region, his projects include a co-production with CBC Radio-Canada's Espace Musique of Tempi con Variazioni with Helmut Lipsky, Suzie LeBlanc and Melosophere premiered at l'Université de Montréal and then presented in 2008 at the Quebec City 400 Anniversary celebrations, released on CD in the fall of 2009 and winning a Prix Opus award in Quebec in 2010, and recordings for Soundstreams Canada and the Art of Time Ensembles in Toronto, including producing that latter's recent release of. Sgt Pepper, a reimagining of the Beatle's classic  featuring performances by Andy Maize (Skydiggers), John Mann (Spirit Of The West), Craig Northey (the Odds), and Steven Page (former lead singer Bare Naked Ladies)..