Gerrard's grand finale: Passion for music, connection to audience fuels emotional farewell to Regina
Gordon Gerrard found himself moved to tears.
The source of his emotional experience was Jeremy Dutcher, a tenor from the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick and a special guest of the Regina Symphony Orchestra (RSO) at the 2018 Forward Currents arts festival.
Dutcher rehearsed and performed alongside a 110-year-old wax cylinder recording that featured the voices of his ancestors. The traditional songs are in Wolastoq, an endangered Indigenous language with less than 100 fluent speakers.
'When (Dutcher) first started singing the first song in rehearsal, I really started to …. I'm being a little bit emotional right now thinking about it (because) it was so incredibly powerful,' recalls Gerrard, RSO's outgoing conductor and music director.
'It's really hard to talk about how impactful music is because the words just don't really fit, but that was an incredibly moving moment.'
Gerrard helped create the moment by guiding an orchestral accompaniment to those sacred voices. It was the first time anyone, even Dutcher himself, had heard the music on such a grand scale.
To bring it all together meant extending the RSO's resources and the spotlight to an up-and-coming musician. Gerrard's willingness to do so was no surprise to long-time friend and mezzo-soprano Marion Newman, who says it's his nature to be inventive but also generous.
Explaining Gerrard's rationale, Newman says he felt the effort was worth it because of the joy Dutcher's music would bring.
It was a 'totally unselfish move,' she continues. 'Instead of just putting on a great big glorious piece of orchestral music that would make his resume look better, he gave that space to Jeremy.'
It also meant a great deal to Newman, who watched the rehearsal through tears of her own. As a member of the Kwakiutl and Stó:lō First Nations on Vancouver Island and B.C.'s Lower Mainland, it was an emotional experience to see Indigenous music elevated in such a way.
'That,' says Newman, 'was one of the most meaningful musical and cultural experiences that I have ever had.'
Having wrapped up the RSO's latest slate of shows, Gerrard looks forward to helping create more memorable experiences in the upcoming season, which begins this fall.
It'll also be his farewell season after a decade in Regina.
Gerrard's decision to move on from the RSO is not to be taken lightly. He provided continuity after the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and also saw value in making room for new ideas to help re-energize the organization.
'It's quite healthy to have turnover in artistic leadership,' says Gerrard. 'I think after a while it's great for the musicians, it's great for the audience, it's great for everybody to have someone else come in.
'I just felt that 10 years was the right time, and I feel also that the RSO is in a strong position now to go through this transition of leadership.'
Gerrard, 47, plans on living in Vancouver to focus on his other role as artistic director for City Opera Vancouver, a position he's held since 2013. Gerrard started his career in the opera world and aims to make it his primary focus while also continuing to travel across Canada as a guest conductor.
'It would be nice to sort of embrace a new set of challenges,' Gerrard says of his shift to opera chamber music. 'It's still music, but it's a very different world in terms of how it operates (and) the people who are operating in it.'
Those who know him best say Gerrard's passion shines through regardless of the genre.
Concertmaster Christian Robinson, who started with RSO around the same time as Gerrard, describes him as a 'musician's musician' with a genuine love for the work.
His guidance as a conductor has pushed others as well, says Robinson, noting that Gerrard would bring challenging new music to engage the group.
During their busiest months, members of the orchestra might spend up to 40 hours with Gerrard to refine pieces of music. But given the limited time for rehearsal, he's considerate in planning those sessions, which signalled to the musicians that he respected them as well as their time.
'Gordon is a wonderful example of someone who brings tremendous thoughtfulness married with a wonderful sense that music is a language of emotion,' says Robinson, RSO's principal first-violinist.
'Gordon (as a conductor) really represents a wonderful middle ground — and not to be cliché — of heart and brain.'
Gerrard has dedicated his life to music.
He was raised on a farm outside Brandon and started learning piano at around seven years old. His parents wanted him and his siblings to have a balanced education that included music, which 'captured my imagination.'
Growing up in rural Manitoba, his introduction to the world of orchestra music included a performance by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in Brandon while he was in elementary school. The distance to Winnipeg made it difficult to access, so he didn't attend shows regularly until he was much older.
After several years of working to master the piano, Gerrard became increasingly struck by the power of music, noting how a live performance can bring a room of strangers together.
While each individual is affected differently, the experience can forge a cathartic connection — even in an auditorium filled with 2,000 listeners like the Conexus Arts Centre in Regina.
Some in the audience might be moved by a gut-wrenching and powerful feeling when the brass section bellows and builds to a moment of tension. Or there's the mesmerizingly beautiful flutes and violins that float above, dancing from one note to the next.
People can be moved by very different elements of a performance.
'That's really what's been driving my work at the RSO,' Gerrard explains. 'Trying to make sure that we are there to help people who want to connect through music, to give them the music that they want and sometimes to show them the music that they don't know they love yet, which happens all the time actually.'
Gerrard has spent his career seeking perfect execution of various pieces, where even a familiar melody from Ludwig van Beethoven can resonate deeply with listeners who hear it live for the first time.
But he also knows that each audience member brings their own experiences that shape how the music washes over them, noting how a particular piece can take people back to a special moment in life or remind them of a loved one they lost.
'There are times when people will talk to me after a concert and they're visibly moved, sometimes to tears,' he says. 'You never know when you're going to program a piece what relationship somebody has to it.
'It always is moving to me to see how much people are touched (and) transported by the music. It just means a lot to people.'
For someone with such musical passion, the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the most challenging periods of Gerrard's career.
It was also a difficult time for the century-old RSO, which is recognized as the longest continuously performing orchestra in the country.
As with many other live arts organizations, the RSO had to cancel several shows and was at risk of shuttering completely due to subsequent crowd-size restrictions and general hesitation about going back into public spaces.
Even now, RSO concerts are estimated to draw at least 100 fewer patrons than before the pandemic. But continuing to rebuild the community connection is a priority for the organization.
One of the first concerts the RSO held after reopening from lockdowns in 2022 was Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4. Gerrard was proud of the program he prepared for the November concert, featuring guest soprano Mariya Krywaniuk.
Although the piece is 'thematically dark,' the final movement with the soprano solo tries 'presenting a child's view of what heaven is like,' according to the RSO's 2022 program notes.
Sadly, the orchestra performed in front of mostly deserted sea of theatre seats.
'The hall was devastatingly empty,' Gerrard recalls. 'It's just hard to put your heart and soul into this product and to be very proud of it and to play to an almost empty hall. It breaks your heart as a musician.'
Although that moment felt demoralizing for Gerrard, he didn't show it.
Robinson praises Gerrard's calm, thoughtful presence and calls him the 'right person at the right time' to lead the organization's artistic direction.
Under his guidance, a group of 60 seasoned RSO musicians managed to persevere through a difficult time by letting themselves become absorbed in the music.
Their conductor describes an orchestra as being attuned to one another. The shared sense of accomplishment when they play 'feeds your soul, if you will,' says Gerrard, 'and lifts you out of some pretty dark places at times.'
In almost a decade of work, Gerrard has aimed to 'deepen the connection' and reach new listeners in southern Saskatchewan. A large part of that is playing music that goes beyond the staples of classical repertoire.
'The experience that I have when I listen to music, that means a lot to me,' he says. 'I want everybody to have that, and I think it's possible.'
A free outdoor concert series called Symphony Under The Sky was one of the RSO's accessible offerings, complemented by a free concert series in Regina's public libraries.
Like some other Canadian orchestras, the RSO has adapted its performances to showcase a wide variety of music. For example, Regina has featured ABBA-themed shows and presented soundtracks alongside screened showings of Disney movies.
'The challenge, of course, when you're programming for a symphony is to try to play as much of these different kinds of music so that everybody can see themselves in it,' Gerrard says.
Looking back, he's especially proud of showcasing Indigenous musicians.
For a 2019 premier of Riel: Heart of the North, the RSO put together a choir of Métis singers and featured young Métis fiddler Jordan Daniels.
It was an opportunity to bring new performers on stage who might not otherwise have the chance to share their culture with a wider audience.
'Often we're reaching out to people who haven't traditionally been part of that sort of classical music world,' Gerrard says. 'We're putting programming on stage that could help some Indigenous folks see their story being told.'
Gerrard strived to leave an impact on Regina by rethinking the role of an orchestra and how music can shape a community. That included bringing to life the Forward Currents festival, which sought to open up conversations on social change.
The festival's first year, which featured Dutcher, focused on the role everyone can play in truth and reconciliation.
LGBTQ2S+ issues provided another theme of Forward Currents — and a deeply important topic for Gerrard as a gay man.
To him, music can serve as an avenue to understand another's perspective, which then leads to 'deepening our community empathy.'
In that way, Gerrard was also visionary in how he transformed the RSO. While musicians have always placed their trust in the long-time artistic director, it was difficult to reimagine how the orchestra could serve Regina in a new way.
About halfway through that initial Forward Currents festival, Robinson had a moment where he saw for himself the impact they could have.
'(Gerrard) made the organization think about itself differently,' says Robinson. 'Thinking about what does a modern symphony orchestra mean to its city, and what can it do? Is it just there for entertainment or can it also service a deeper exploratory purpose for a city?'
Gerrard will conduct 11 of 21 shows during the 2025-26 season, which lands between September and May. He puts a lot of consideration into selecting music for the orchestra each year — and the upcoming schedule is certainly no exception.
For his final season, Gerrard has hand-picked a program that 'celebrates the relationship between (him) and the musicians' to commemorate their decade together.
Those plans include music by the world's most iconic composer: Ludwig van Beethoven. It's a logical and sentimental conclusion to play the final outstanding piece from Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 after the RSO has made its way through other parts of the composition in previous years.
When he first joined the RSO in 2016, Gerrard collaborated with the Regina Leader-Post on a column, which evolved into a regular series titled Between the Notes.
In his columns, Gerrard would reflect on a human experience and then relate it to music. After three weeks of living in the Queen City, he wrote about the pains of moving. It was his eighth move, but he remarked that Beethoven did it over 70 times.
Gerrard's published musings were a way to reach out to a new city and show why the venerable organization's work is still important after more than 100 years of existence.
'The experiences that we have in the concert hall are direct reflections of what we bring with us when we sit down at a concert,' he says, whether it's conversations with friends or a recent movie you've watched.
'It's all connected, and the notion that a Beethoven Symphony is disconnected from our lives even in 2025 I think is false, and so that was really my goal when I sat down to write those columns.'
Prior to his first concert as the RSO's 15th conductor, Gerrard wrote: 'My greatest hope is that everyone who joins us this season will experience something that transforms in one way or another.'
It's a goal he's kept front and centre over the past decade.
Before coming to Regina, Gerrard had worked across Canada but this was his first chance to take full rein of an orchestra.
Now, as the RSO looks for its next music director, Gerrard's 'best piece of advice' for his eventual successor is simple: to listen.
'Get to know the people in the orchestra, the musicians, get to know the people who come to the RSO all the time,' he says. 'Those stories, the things that they tell you, I think will inform where the orchestra needs to go next.'
While Gerrard says he will miss Regina, he's always looked at his role as being a temporary one in service to the community. He views it as a natural thing in the music world to move around, just as Beethoven did.
'I'm there for a brief time; brief compared to some musicians that I think are now approaching well over 50 years in the orchestra,' he says. 'So my time, while it feels long, is actually quite short. I'm really a caretaker, a steward. The people of the community really own the orchestra, and they get to decide what they want to do.'
As Gerrard looks back on his decade in Regina, he'll treasure sharing the stage with RSO musicians and special guests. He'll also remember the music that evoked raw emotion for Regina audiences, like when the group played alongside Dutcher seven years ago.
Gerrard hopes the shows he's done during his tenure in southern Saskatchewan impacted audiences the same way Dutcher's performance moved him.
'After the first song, people leapt to their feet,' he recalls. 'It was an incredible moment that I'll never forget.'
State of the arts: Why are so many of Regina's performing arts groups struggling to survive?
RSO hires new executive director, RFF looks to fill vacant leadership position
nyking@postmedia.com
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