Halifax music dynamo Heather Gibson to take over NAC Presents

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An Eastern Canada music dynamo has elected to move to Ottawa.

The National Arts Centre announced on Wednesday that Heather Gibson, for six seasons the executive director of the Halifax Jazz Festival and an industrious fixture on the Halifax music scene, will be the new executive producer of its homegrown singer-songwriter series NAC Presents. Gibson takes over for Simone Deneau, the founder of a program that books 50 concerts a year into four NAC venues, including Southam Hall.

Deneau, who first joined the NAC as an usher in 1978, will retire later this year. Gibson begins her post on Sept. 20.

"I'm surprised the job came open," Gibson told The Globe and Mail. "It's one of a small handful of jobs that was of interest to me, outside of Halifax."

Now in its sixth season, NAC Presents is designed to nurture musicians and to attract a younger audience to Ottawa's performing arts hub. "Most of my career has been working with emerging artists," says Gibson, who helped musicians Jill Barber, Rose Cousins, Jenn Grant and Amelia Curran early in their careers. "The artist development program at the NAC is of significant interest to me."

Gibson has resigned from her position with Halifax Jazz and sold the Company House, a Halifax music room she co-owned. She has scaled back her role as president of KHG Management, a busy organization with interests in talent management, festival and concert promotion and artist booking. The Dead of Winter Music Festival, an annual acoustic-based happening in Halifax she helped establish, will continue without her as artistic producer.

"I've been here for 24 years," says Gibson, "and I kind of feel I've hit a bit of a ceiling in Halifax."

With its four venues of escalating capacity (topping out at Southam Hall's 2,323 seats), the NAC Presents series is a talent-nurturing and promotional pipeline. This season's concerts range from Andy Shauf at the NAC Studio (300 seats), Kathleen Edwards at the NAC Theatre (897 seats) and Gordon Lightfoot at the Southam soft-seater.

Up in the air is Gibson's business relationship with the gifted St. John's singer-songwriter Curran, whom she has managed for 10 years. It's possible the programming position at the NAC will no longer allow her to continue on with the Juno-winning musician. "I began with Amelia when she was making $4 a night," Gibson says. "But if it's determined to be a conflict of interest to work with her, we'll have to go our separate ways."