A conductor committed to bringing classical music to Rocky View County (RVC) and other communities in the Calgary region is among the recipients of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Awards.
Carlos Foggin, music director and conductor of the RVC-based Rocky Mountain Symphony Orchestra (RMSO), said he’s grateful to receive recognition for his contributions in the music world, but added RMSO’s musicians deserve just as much credit.
“My job is to give everyone enough space and enough encouragement to do what they do best,” he said. “The best conductor knows when to get out of the way and just let the musicians play.”
Foggin is one of 10 Albertans to receive this year’s award, which recognizes outstanding artistic achievements and contributions. This year's recipients were announced June 4.
Foggin's journey toward this achievement has been far from simple. At five years old, he said, he began taking piano lessons in the hamlet of Del Bonita, located in southern Alberta.
“There were, like, 40 houses and it was all farms there,” he said. “A lady down the road – one of our closest neighbours who was about eight miles away and had a music degree – taught me until I was eight, and then she determined she had no more to teach me.”
Foggin began driving 75 minutes every Monday night to Lethbridge University for piano lessons. He kept that schedule until he was eighteen years old.
Despite being an accomplished pianist – Foggin won competitions at provincial and national levels – his high school guidance counsellor insisted that music was just a hobby and encouraged him to pursue a career in medicine, law or engineering.
“Being impressionable and young, and not knowing music could be a career because everybody from a small town was a farmer or a doctor, I went into those kinds of studies in university,” he said.
Foggin said it wasn’t until his early thirties, while teaching at a private school, that he returned to music. In one of their final conversations, his dying grandfather told him to go back to school and study the art he loved. Two days after his grandfather’s funeral, Foggin was accepted into a bachelor of music program at the University of Calgary.
Although he initially pursued a degree in organ performance, a series of events – falling on ice, a ski injury and taking down a bank robber – resulted in three wrist injuries within 16 months.
“I wasn’t able to practice as much and I needed to take some recovery time off,” Foggin said. “My advisors at the university pushed me into the conducting route.”
After finishing his music degree, Foggin was accepted into a master's program, only to have it cancelled before it began. Although his spot in the program would remain available for three years, he decided on an alternative route to gain conducting experience.
In 2016, Foggin formed RMSO. The intent of the orchestra – which operates out of Balzac’s Polaris Centre for the Performing Arts near CrossIron Mills mall – is to bring classical music to smaller communities in the Calgary area, including Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, High River and Strathmore. Foggin said RMSO has performed to more than 30,000 Albertans in more than 50 community concerts.
“So here we are now in the fifth season of my master project,” Foggin said with a laugh.
The idea behind a touring orchestra comes from Foggin’s belief that everyone should have access to music, regardless of where they live.
“I think that’s why the orchestra means so much to me, because how many young kids out there in these small towns think the only viable careers to ‘get off the farm’ is to become a doctor or a lawyer?” he said. “If one of those kids can hear my story – that I wanted to do music and all the people I trusted told me not to, and now I’m almost 40 and I’m doing it – then maybe they’ll question their high school guidance counselor.”
Kate Mackenzie, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @katefmack
