Where the cows join in the chorus - artistic director and conductor Michael Schmidt and the 'Symphony in the Barn Summer Festival'

Michael Schmidt is an Ontario farmer with a love for agri-culture.

Michael Schmidt farms 100 acres on Concession 2 in Grey County. In his spare time, he is artistic director and conductor of The Symphony in the Barn Summer Festival.

Concerts take place in a 10,000 square foot timber frame barn, where the barn cat wanders at will. This season, the third for the festival, featured a performance of Carmina Burana by the Guelph Festival Choir (conducted by Gerald Neufeld). Schmidt himself conducts the Barn Festival Orchestra which this season accompanied pianist Anton Kuerti on the five Beethoven piano concertos. Schmidt was also at the podium for the festival's opera presentations, Lehar's The Merry Widow with Stephanie Brill, Brian Belleth and Alex Fleuriau Chateau; and Mozart's seldom performed Zaide with Catherine Sayers, Chris Coyea and Marcel Beaulieu.

It may seem like a strange idea, but for Michael Schmidt, it's a natural outcome of his two main interests. Born in Kassel, Germany in 1954, he studied violin at the University of Stuttgart while taking agricultural courses in Wasserburg. It was during this period that he founded and conducted the Chamber Youth Orchestra in Stuttgart.

After earning a masters degree in farming, Schmidt started a biodynamic organic dairy farm. In 1983, he and his wife Dorthea emigrated to Canada, settling on Glencolton Farm in Glenelg Township near Durham, Ontario. The very next year, Schmidt founded the Saugeen Bach choir, which he also conducted. The Saugeen Festival of Music came next, and then, three years ago, The Symphony in the Barn, which draws players from the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and the Hamilton Philharmonic.

Schmidt's hope is that the festival will eventually grow into a much larger enterprise, not a far-fetched idea when one remembers the beginnings of the Stratford Festival: Shakespeare in a tent in small-town Ontario, a preposterous idea. Forty-four years later, that little acorn of an idea has grown into a mutli-million dollar cultural giant of worldwide renown.

So far, Schmidt's light-hearted, rustic festival is doing very well. Attendance doubled the second year and this year, Altamira Investment Services became a high-profile sponsor. Perfomers of Kuerti's calibre will attract confirmed music lovers, while Schmidt's easy-going approach to high culture is sure to reassure the merely curious, and may make devotees of them.

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