Douglas McNabney / Photo by Bo Huang

Eleven years ago, the Toronto Summer Music Festival kicked off in fine style. I remember being curious if cautious in my excitement, happy to see it unfolding, if unsure a classical music festival would catch on in Toronto; this isn’t exactly an environment that would support a Tanglewood, I reasoned, and come summertime, there was already so much to do in the city. It didn’t feel like classical music would get a foothold amidst all the festivals, street parties, and other summery cultural events. How wrong I was.

The TSMF has grown to become a very big, very popular part of Toronto’s cultural calendar. This year’s edition opens July 14th (this Thursday) and runs to August 7th, with a particular focus on the music of Great Britain. it sounds like a hoary old trope, but it’s true: the festival has something for everyone. You want fancy and big? Try the big-name concerts at Koerner Hall. You want smaller? Try Heliconian Hall. There’s also student performances, talks, and a generous helping of off-the-radar work too. And, there’s the Academy, perhaps the most vital part of the Festival, which offers a training and performance space for young musicians to work with established artists. And there’s a very casual, relaxed, entirely unpretentious approach to all of it.

That’s largely because of the work of one man, musician/academic Douglas McNabney, who’s been with the festival as Artistic Director since 2010. This year he’s stepping down, and will be replaced in the job by Toronto Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Jonathan Crow, with whom he’s worked in the past. Widely considered one of Canada’s finest chamber musicians, McNabney has performed all over the world, in every festival you can think of, and is currently Professor of Chamber Music at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University.

For someone so accomplished within the classical realm, you might think he’d come off snobbish, uppity — all the usual tropes associates with the culture. As you’ll hear from our chat, McNabney is none of those things; conversational, funny, and wickedly smart, he’s truly a Canadian cultural treasure who will be sorely missed by the Toronto music community. But, as he tells me, he’s a builder at heart.. so, onto a new (mystery) project, then! We also discuss the issue of diversity within the classical music world, and how the Festival, and the Festival Academy, is helping to bring about change.