The first Candlelight Concert took place in Madrid in 2019, but it has since spread to over 100 cities across the globe, including in Calgary in 2020.
The concerts are organized by Fever, a global online site to list and sell tickets for live entertainment. Alexandre Boccardi, the manager of Fever in Canada, says their vision is to make culture more accessible.
“The goal was really to make this a multisensory experience,” says Boccardi. “We try to present music that they might not be familiar with, or if it’s popular music, present it in a new format, namely in this case, a lot of our concerts are string quartets or piano.”
Calgary has hosted its concerts in a variety of settings such as the Lantern Community Church, the Hangar Flight Museum, and Fish Creek Park.
“The candles really complement the setting to make this a really soothing experience where people can kind of forget everything that’s going on around the world,” says Boccardi.
Chloe Deustcher attended the February concert From Bach to Beatles and says she was inspired to attend because of Instagram photos she saw.
“I’m just really impressed, it was really well done. There was plenty of space, it was comfortable, and the sound quality was really good,” says Deustcher.
Upcoming concerts include tributes to Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, Queen, Taylor Swift and more.