Update: The upcoming Music by the Sea festival 鈥� which was set to include in-person performances 鈥� has been postponed until further notice, based on concerns over the rise in COVID-19 numbers on 91原创 Island. .
IN CONCERT
What: Music by the Sea 2021 featuring the Borealis String Quartet, Aurora Piano Trio, Great American Songbook Trio and more
Where: Victoria International Marina, 1 Cooperage Pl., Inner Harbour
When: Tuesday, Aug. 17, to Sunday, Aug. 22
Tickets: $108 - $168 from
The Victoria International Marina will be immersed in jazz and classical music next week, as it has been so often during the pandemic. That鈥檚 due to the consistent efforts of Christopher Donison, who has been staging an ongoing series of unique concerts from his former home near the Johnson Street bridge to the shores of the Songhees Walkway for the past year-and-a-half.
The do-everything dynamo is still making moves. Donison is setting a Victoria version of his annual festival, Music By the Sea, which has been based in Bamfield since 2006, at the marina for its 15th edition, which starts Tuesday and runs over six concerts through Aug. 22. The festival was scheduled to have its Victoria debut last year, but that arrival was delayed due to the pandemic.
鈥淭hat was going to be a whole new beginning,鈥� Donison said. 鈥淚 worried that if I did nothing, I was going to lose that connection with the marina.鈥�
Music By the Sea wasn鈥檛 looking like a possibility for Victoria in 2021 until live performances were permitted by the province last month. As the executive artistic director, Donison had to work quickly in order to make his dream a reality. 鈥淚t took me a few days to find out what the [site] capacity was, whether the marina was OK with it, and then our board had to meet. It took me about a week or two to figure out if we really could do it. We pulled the trigger on it three weeks ago. I鈥檝e put together a pretty damn good program, in what would usually take a year to plan.鈥�
The festival, which will feature six reduced-capacity concerts for 80 people inside the marina, includes an array of acclaimed artists, ranging from classical to jazz. Genres are blurred happily during Music By the Sea, which has become its hallmark during the past decade-and-a-half.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a difficult concept for some people to understand, because there鈥檚 nothing really like it,鈥� Donison said. 鈥淲hen we say jazz and classical concerts, people think they are separate concerts. But you get a little bit of everything at each performance, which makes it not so boring.鈥�
Donison has spent the majority of the pandemic finding new ways to work. Last year, he livestreamed a full concert every week for 10 weeks on Facebook from the window of his former apartment in the Janion building, near the Johnson Street bridge.
The project was huge success, garnering tens of thousands of viewers and boasting top-flight production values (at one point, Donison said he had nine cameras livestreaming some of his events).
He鈥檚 happy to be performing for in-person audiences again. For all the content livestreaming offered his audience, nothing beats the real thing, he said. 鈥淏y the end of the festival, there is such a feeling of collegiality and music-making, it becomes a magical, magical thing.鈥�
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