The Allegra Chamber Orchestra and Astrolabe Musik Theatre present festivELLE at the Vancouver Playhouse on June 29 and 30

“AS A WOMEN-LED organization with the explicit mandate of supporting female and minority artists, the Allegra Chamber Orchestra’s programming leans heavily, if not exclusively, on that portion of the population blessed with two X chromosomes. But for the 2023 edition of its biennial festivELLE, a summertime celebration of contemporary music, Allegra is focusing on something that affects everyone: mental health.

More specifically, the company will present art that examines different aspects of mental illness, along with a pair of professionally guided mental-health workshops and several free screenings of the short film Left Opened, a look at everyday anxiety and how to cope with it. For Allegra artistic director Janna Sailor, festivELLE’s theme is at once an artistic opportunity, a public service, and a sad necessity.

Like many, many others, Sailor is still grieving the sudden death of the luminously gifted and universally beloved composer Jocelyn Morlock, who died in March; she had both spoken about her own struggles with mental illness publicly and long advocated for others. Realizing that this loss needed to be commemorated, and given that festivELLE’s theme was already in place, the Allegra team quickly decided to open the festival with a celebration of Morlock’s work…”

www.createastir.ca