The brilliant duelling cellos of Ben Bolt-Martin and George Meanwell will fill Stratford Market Square with beautiful sounds from all 8 of their strings on Sunday August 23, 2020 in a special Streetside LIVE! performance.
Ben Bolt-Martin works as a cellist, composer and conductor. Ben teaches cello and chamber music at the University of Waterloo and is Principal Conductor of the Waterloo Chamber Players. He lives in Kitchener with his wife Liz.
Ben has played 19 seasons with the Stratford Festival, where he plays for live musical productions and has recorded incidental music for dozens of stage plays. Ben has also recorded for the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, the Grand Theatre in London and for the Shaw festival, among others.
Ben performs with the INNERchamber ensemble. He was the featured performer on a disc of new works entitled “Notes Towards” which was nominated in 2009 for a Juno Award. As a solo performer, his focus is on works for solo cello written for him or by him, often involving electronically “looped” material and spanning a multitude of genres and traditions.
In the late 1970s George Meanwell was guitarist and vocalist with the acoustic Toronto-based folk trio Short Turn which appeared on national television and radio, including Morningside, 90 Minutes Live and George Hamilton IV. After a decade spent principally as a freelance cellist, he was Quartetto Gelato’s founding cellist, guitarist and mandolinist in concerts throughout North America, Europe and Asia. In 2002 he returned to song writing, releasing Another Street (2003), Late (2008) and The Easy Straight (2013).
Since 2010 he has appeared regularly on the Stratford Festival stage playing cello, guitars, banjo, harmonica, concertina, fiddle, recorders, melodeon, and hurdy-gurdy. During this period he was also featured by Stratford Summer Music in six solo programs of his own music, Songs of Travel. In 2014 he appeared in the Guild Festival Theatre production of The Importance of Being Earnest and a Canadian Stage workshop of a new play by Alon Nashman, Charlotte, A Tri-Coloured Play with Music. Last year he contributed original music to, and appeared in, The Taming of the Shrew, filmed by the Stratford Festival for theatrical release. Most recently he wrote and performed the incidental music for Graham Abbey’s Groundling Theatre The Winter’s Tale (Dora Mavor Moore award, Best Production) in Toronto.
Streetside LIVE! 