Winnipeg.

City in Canada, capital of Manitoba. Its geographical isolation has been a disadvantage in that more expensive and complicated types of music-making, such as opera, have not become established. However, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet grew from its foundation in the 1930s to a position as one of the leading international travelling companies. The first 40 years of the city’s musical life (1874–1914) consisted mostly of sporadic concerts by amateur or visiting artists and private musical enterprise. A long series of British organists and choirmasters, along with the rapidly expanding activities of the Men’s Musical Club (founded 1915), established a tradition of respect for English music that was not challenged by other music until the mid-20th century. The Winnipeg Male Voice Choir (1916) made several American tours in the 1920s, and the mixed Philharmonic Society (1922), taken over by the Men’s Musical Club in 1929 to form the Philharmonic Choir, helped to make the interwar period particularly notable in terms of public musical participation. This growing involvement of the public was enormously increased by the club’s sponsorship of the Manitoba Musical Competition Festival (from 1919), which subsequently became the largest of its kind in the world. In 1983 it was renamed the Winnipeg Music Competition Festival. Many of its leading competitors have achieved international fame.

An important postwar development was the foundation (1948) of the Winnipeg SO, which developed on a regular subscription basis and cooperated with the Philharmonic Choir in large-scale choral works. The orchestra’s conductors have included Walter Kaufmann (1949–56), Victor Feldbrill (1958–68), Piero Gamba (1970–80) and Bramwell Tovey (from 1989). In 1969 the Manitoba Opera Association was founded and has become Winnipeg’s permanent opera-producing organization, mounting productions of the standard repertory. The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1972 and several chamber groups, the most notable of which is the Festival String Quartet (1968), have become established. Other contributors to musical life are the Women’s Musical Club, active as a concert agency, the University of Manitoba School of Music (1964), the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society, the Winnipeg Singers, MusikBarock (1989) and the CBC’s annual Spring Radio Festival. The annual summer Winnipeg Folk Festival, founded in 1974, features Canadian and international folksingers and folk groups.