From Una Voce, June 2025, Issues in Focus: Audience Engagement; Social media in Vancouver and a podcast in Calgary.
“We’re the people playing our hearts out every week of the orchestra season.” That’s how principal trumpet Adam Zinatelli starts each episode of “Notes from the Stage”. Introducing those people to a wider audience has been the focus of the podcast’s first season.
The usual format is a one-on-one conversation hosted by Adam, with a different member of the orchestra each episode. The musicians provide two short audio clips to bookend the episode. The first episode dropped in September 2024, featuring concertmaster Diana Cohen, and episode 20 came out in May, with new principal percussionist Chris Sies. Episodes generally run around 30 minutes; each has been a wonderful introduction to that musician’s personality, quirks and preoccupations, ranging from instrument maintenance to bread baking.
“What I want to do with the show,” Adam told me, “is to let listeners get to know the people, and the best way to get to the real person is to get them thinking on their feet in the moment.” Adam has a great instinct for getting people off-script, pulling on unexpected threads in a conversation. I always learn new things, even about people I’ve known a long time. Adam has made a point to interview each of the musicians who retired or joined the orchestra this past season, a nice way to celebrate and welcome our colleagues.
The podcast was conceived and planned as a musician-run initiative, with no involvement from Calgary Phil administration. Our Players’ Association, the CPPA, passed a motion endorsing the initiative, and elected a committee of 3 musicians, our CPPA Editorial Committee, to supervise the production. While the Editorial Committee holds responsibility for the final product going out into the world, in practice the work has been very minimal. Adam records and edits the podcast in his home studio with technical help from sound engineer Nathan Chandler.
Adam has invested a lot of work and time in this, and we are abundantly grateful. The podcast can be downloaded (as they say, wherever you get your podcasts) or streamed through the calgaryphilmusicians.ca website. With hundreds of downloads a month, the show's audience is growing with each new episode, and that doesn't even include the harder-to-count option of streaming the show from a web browser. The reception has been hugely positive, and those of us who have appeared as guests have received lots of great feedback. Season 2 will drop in September 2025 – subscribe now to get it right in your feed!
- Matt Heller, Calgary Phil Editorial Committee
