Rising majestically over the tree canopy of Prince’s Island Park this past weekend were the sounds of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, alongside the less aural and more visually stunning 30-foot-tall public art piece The Fabulist.

All of that as part of the weekend’s Beat Beethoven + Phil in the Park run, put on by Run Calgary during the City of Calgary’s annual celebration of Culture Days.

The concert held on the Prince’s Island Park mainstage was the first in decades to feature the entire CPO orchestra, outdoors, and for free since the cancellation of both Mozart in the Mountains and Beethoven in the Badlands in 2008.

Likewise, the showing of Bee Kingdom’s The Fabulist was the first in six years, with the last inflation of the gigantic art piece first created for Beakerhead, in 2018.

“When we can bring arts together, community together, that is the definition in my eyes about culture days. To see Prince’s Island Park full of people on a sunny day, runners coming through it is the perfect blend, and we can’t ask for anything more,” said Franca Gualtieri, Manager of Arts and Culture at The City of Calgary.

“We are such a diverse city. We’re one of the third most diverse cities in Canada. I think culture days only amplifies that fabric that makes us what we are today.”

Calgary’s Culture Days have been held every weekend throughout September.

Kirsten Fleming, Executive Director of Run Calgary called the partnership between her organization and the CPO a dream partnership, and the race at Prince’s Island Park alongside the free outdoor concert, an evolution for the 7th annual Beat Beethoven race.

“This event took a couple of years to get off the ground from the time of the first spark of inspiration when it came to our attention that this existed in Kingston. I went out to Kingston and watched it happen. I was like, ‘We can do this better at Calgary’… and we’ve had multiple years in different iterations, but this is definitely the most exciting one,” she said.

“It could have been a kiss of death if we couldn’t have quite pulled it off that first year. Here we are, seven years later, with the full 66-piece orchestra on the main stage at Prince’s Island Park, with an expectation of 10,000 people coming for the free concert, and 600 participants running and walking, trying to beat the music.”

The combination of art and sport was inspiring, said Fleming.

“To be able to bring free, accessible music to Prince’s Island Park and mesh it together with sport is so exciting, and really shows and demonstrates to this future generation you can be a musician and an athlete. Hopefully there’s some kids out in the audience today that become both,” she said.

CPO’s CEO Marc Stevens said that it was an important part of the orchestra’s mandate to provide accessible concerts, and the first full-orchestra, free concert was an important step to sharing culture in the city.

“We have appeared often in the courts at Suncor [Energy Centre] and Brookfield [Place] with their support, inside at lunch breaks for folks, and we love doing that. But I always want to put the orchestra where people are almost literally going to trip over—because I didn’t come to orchestras until I was an adult, and I know how wonderful and powerful that sound is, and I want as many people as possible to get that chance,” Stevens said.

“This is the first time we’re outdoors in a long, long time, and there’s a lot of folks out there who are really appreciating that.”

The importance of being a part of Calgary’s Culture Days could be summed up in making Calgary a place that is worth living in, he said.

“I’m going to quote my friend Irfhan Rawji, who does a huge amount for the arts and culture in Calgary. He’s a venture capitalist, he’s made Calgary his home, and he says, ‘there’s no point him starting businesses if there’s nothing for people to do here,’ and there is so much for people to do here,” Stevens said.

Arts scene very different than at the start of the millennium

Runners and visitors alike would have had a hard time not seeing the towering, but purposefully cute design of Ryan Fairweather and Bee Kingdom’s The Fabulist.

The public art blowup was added to the City of Calgary’s Culture Days celebration on the island for a one-day showing on Sunday.

The name of the work, and of the character came about as part of a desire to create a character that would be a storyteller for Canada, said Fairweather.

“The idea was to come up with a character based in Canadiana. It would be a rocket ship character, a character that would travel to different planets and tell alien civilizations about Canada,” he said.

Fairweather began his professional art career as a glassblower, eventually founding Bee Kingdom with fellow glassblowers Philip Bandura and Tim Belliveau.

“There’s something about creating a character as a giant, that all of a sudden, rather than you’re an audience standing over this glass piece, it’s kind of inverted now. Now you’ve got the art piece standing over you, and it’s this character that’s part of the environment. It’s no longer this isolated, pretty thing. You feel small next to it, and I love the feeling that they’re also giant and cute. They’re not scary,” he said.

“They’re supposed to be giant, cute characters that aren’t trying to destroy the city, but they’re talking about like nature and animals and environment and space exploration. I think they’re just relatable, and I’ve always used characters because they are relatable to get across ideas I want to talk about. If I can get a character that embodies those ideas, it’s easier for people to relate to and discuss them.”

The work, which was created for Beakerhead in 2015, had its last showing in 2018 before the pandemic hit. It will be returning this year, for Beakerhead.

The arts and culture scene has grown a lot from when he, along with Bandura and Belliveau, were on the ground floor for arts in the city, Fairweather said.

“We started our studio back in 2004, and back then arts and culture in Calgary wasn’t that strong. Whenever we talked to people about what we did, they were like, ‘glass blowing, what is that? Why would you do that? Like, why aren’t you making money downtown in the oil industry and energy?” he said.

“It was hard to explain that we were artists in Calgary, and that’s just what we did. We didn’t have an energy job. Over the years, there has been a huge effort and more events. There’s a much stronger arts culture here.

“Calgary does have artistic roots that not everybody’s aware of. Arts in Calgary are becoming more and more synonymous, and to have The Fabulist be an icon, a representative icon of Calgary art, along with like [Run Calgary] and the [CPO] event, it’s just cool to be a part of the texture of the tapestry of Calgary art.”

Photos: The Fabulist rises over Prince’s Island Park