Arts and Culture
Every summer, usually in July, the largest music festival, the Island Music Fest on Vancouver Island takes place in the Comox Valley. Performers and audience members from near and far gather for three days of camping and an eclectic mix of music. There are several other festivals in the area and they include the North Island Festival of Performing Arts, Fiddlefest, Comox Valley Highland Games and the Comox Valley Piano Society puts on performances at the Stan Hagen Theatre.
The city is home to the Comox Valley Youth Music Centre, originally the Courtenay Youth Music Camp, a two week long annual summer school, which has increased to a six week program. Notable people involved with the centre include Harry Freedman who taught there 1971-1982, Gilles Bellemare (composition), Diana Krall (piano), Nancy Argenta (voice), Ingrid Jensen (trumpet) and Renee Rosnes (piano).
The Sid Williams Theatre, located in downtown Courtenay, is the major performance theatre in the Comox Valley. Other theatres include the Rainbow Youth Theatre, the Courtenay Little Theatre and the Stan Hagen Theatre.
The Vancouver Island Regional Library has a branch located in downtown Courtenay. The Courtenay branch offers many services such as free WIFI for library members, computer access, and printing and photocopying stations.
Read more about this topic: Courtenay, British Columbia
Famous quotes containing the words arts and/or culture:
“If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world’s inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The first time many women hold their tiny babies, they are apt to feel as clumsy and incompetent as any man. The difference is that our culture tells them they’re not supposed to feel that way. Our culture assumes that they will quickly learn how to be a mother, and that assumption rubs off on most women—so they learn.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)