Music and memories

Carolyn Basha, a behind-the-scenes superstar of the Manitoba arts world, will be celebrated by her family and friends at a memorial concert on Friday at the Desautels Concert Hall — a University of Manitoba venue Basha helped will into existence.

Before her death in July 2024 following a brief and sudden bout of cancer, the university’s director of major gifts — a trained classical pianist and longtime arts volunteer — ensured the school’s newest performance facility got as much financial support as possible, raising millions of dollars toward its construction.

Stephanie Levene, the university’s associate vice-president of alumni and donor relations says that though Basha didn’t live to see the venue’s opening last September, the concert hall’s existence is a testament to her late colleague’s commitment to the project.

“Her fingerprints are all over every aspect of it,” Levene says.

So when Basha’s family — husband Gilles and children Emelia, Maura and Sam Fournier — agreed to organize the Concert for Carolyn, there was little question where it would take place.

“I had been thinking about wanting to do something just generally (as a memorial) and I was sitting in a seat at the concert hall that has our mom’s name on it, watching the opera last February, and the idea came in kind of a rush. It felt like an epiphany,” says Sam Fournier, a bassist and multi-instrumentalist who graduated from the university with a bachelor of jazz studies last year.

As Sam started to plan, he knew the whole family would be involved.

Emelia Fournier, a Montreal-based writer and journalist, says the months after her mother’s death were a whirlwind.

“The mini-funeral we slapped together last minute was actually quite beautiful. We had it out at my aunt’s plot of land in Ile des Chênes and a bunch of musicians showed up. People brought food for a potluck,” she says.

“She would have loved that, but we wanted to do something to honour the more, I don’t know, impressive aspects of her life and career, like getting millions and millions of dollars into the arts and being such a talented pianist.”

While working with organizations such as the Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the Newfoundland-born Basha was always a dedicated musician and arts consumer, her family says.

In the mid-1980s, she was an honours student in classical piano performance at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. While there, she met bassist Gilles Fournier, who was studying jazz performance.

The couple then started their family and working lives in Winnipeg, where Gilles says his wife was an integral supporter of art and artists, not just the ones in her family. Basha played piano during her daughters’ practices, rehearsals and performances during their childhood classes with the School of Contemporary Dancers.

“We really wanted to celebrate Carolyn on a large scale,” says Gilles, a founding member of the long-standing Winnipeg funk band Ego Spank.

The family agreed that any such celebration should have a homespun feel, evoking Basha’s warm and inviting sensibilities, coloured in autumnal tones with the aroma of fresh baked goods floating above a well-curated soundtrack. To that end, comfy couches, eclectic wall art and homey lighting fixtures — including a cat-shaped lamp — will decorate the venue on Friday night.

“What we hope is that it feels like you’re in our living room, playing music or listening to our mom playing piano,” says Maura Fournier, who will read a spoken-word piece and MC the event with her older sister.

The program will feature original compositions from both Gilles and Sam Fournier, who will be joined by an extensive roster of artists, including Joanna Miller, Christopher Dunn, Sam Singer and Amber Epp, for performances of several songs, including ones by Basha’s favourite artists, who include Patrick Watson, Bahamas and John Prine. Basha’s niece, dance artist Kéïta Fournier-Pelletier, will perform.

Proceeds from the event will directly support the Carolyn Basha Memorial Bursary in Music, which provides financial support to full-time students in their second, third or fourth year of study in any bachelor of music or jazz programs at the U of M’s Desautels faculty of music.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca