Productions /

Symphony in the Barn

Although Michael Schmidt is best known in Canada for his twenty-five year crusade of civil disobedience opposing Canada’s legal ban on unpasteurized milk and cheese (the former a staple of health food stores in the United States; the latter essential to Italy’s best parmesan, and to both camembert and brie made in France), his summer music festival at Glencolton Farms (in the Ontario countryside about two hours north of Toronto) has earned him an enviable international reputation and a loyal following as a talented symphony orchestra conductor and impresario. This not only because of his gift for presenting magical classical music concerts en plein air under the stars, but for introducing festival visitors to the daily life of his dairy collective, his joy in a pre-industrial approaches to farming and cuisine, and to realizing art’s potential to make common cause and effect political change.

A monthlong residency in 2002 as a member of Schmidt symphony orchestra (and an invitation to return the following year) proved to be an inflection point in Carol Gimbel’s career and has been a fundamental source of inspiration ever since. Our return in recent years as Schmidt’s creative partner at Symphony in the Barn is a particular point of pride for musicinthenbarns.