Bar Harbor Music Festival - 59 years old - looks to future with new director
BAR HARBOR, June 25, 2025 - How do you succeed a force of nature?
“As a young man with an important violin and a grand vision, Francis Fortier III blew into Bar Harbor in 1967 and helped revive the town’s identity as a cultural mecca with his Bar Harbor Music Festival,” wrote Nan Lincoln, the culture scribe for the Islander, in a beautiful tribute on April 10, 2024 upon Fortier’s death at 86.
“Anyone who knew Francis knows how relentless he could be when he was on a mission and would not be surprised that he eventually got those movers and shakers to share his vision of a future Bar Harbor that would, along with its natural wonders and unavoidable tourist attractions, become a cultural mecca for the arts.”
Allison Kiger was Fortier’s choice as successor many years before frail health sidelined his management of the festival in 2023.
His death in the spring of 2024 left a vast void.
“Last year was very difficult,” Kiger said in an interview. “We were all in mourning. Francis had left all his stuff in the office, thinking he was going to go back. So a lot of it was about Francis.
“But this year, I think, is about the festival.”
Exactly as Fortier had scripted, Allison Kiger went back to work in 2025 by stretching the canvas and take the festival to new heights.
In the book, The Founder’s Mentality by Chris Zook and James Allen, the authors wrote about how successors can preserve or evolve the founder’s insurgent mission, but with more scalable systems and discipline.
Tim Cook comes to mind.
Cook doubled Apple's revenue and profits, launched new product lines (Apple Watch, AirPods) and oversaw the rise of Apple's market cap to more than $3 trillion.
Satya Nadella also hasn’t done too badly as the CEO of Microsoft, bringing it back to the prominence of the Bill Gates era, after a false start under Steve Ballmer.
Like Fortier, Kiger is an accomplished musician - a flutist. She has the technical chops, but she would be the first to say that flute is not a central instrument in classical chamber music.
She got a call in 2003 to accompany longtime festival pianist Christopher Johnson in his recital. “And so I became, when they needed a flute player, which is maybe just a couple days of summer, kind of the flute player.”
In 2010, she let it be known she would welcome an opportunity in Bar Harbor to get out of the sweltering summers in Manhattan provided someone could find her housing. Fortier had undertaken a considerable expansion of the festival and Kiger’s overture was good timing, she said.
“And then we just clicked, the three of us,” Kiger said, including Fortier’s wife Deborah, who was his lifelong partner in all matters of the festival.
“That was how over about 10 or 15 years, Francis decided I was the obvious successor,” Kiger said.
In April I attended an event in Manhattan to honor friends of the Fortiers and was struck by how many patrons who donated to the festival had never been to Bar Harbor. That was testament to the Fortiers’ allure and strength of promise.
The Fortiers also had the foresight to see the future. While he was still in his Seventies, Francis Fortier could recognize how a much younger Allison Kiger was able to envision a future from a different lens.
This summer’s festival has three examples:
Youth. The festival’s piece de resistance promises a brilliant send-up of the Italian opera, Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” (Elixir of Love). There will be two performances. The first one July 15 at 2 at the Criterion Theater will be followed by a reception at Cafe This Way. More than 10 bars/restaurants will be participating in serving the “Elixir of Love” cocktail.
Expanded schedule. What once was a July-only festival now has 11 performances in August, including Christopher Johnson’s “All Beethovan’s Blockbuster” Aug. 30. (I saw Arthur Rubenstein perform “Pathetique” in the late Sixties. Most of the musicians weren’t even born then.) On Aug. 4, I will be planted firmly in my seat for Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. The late Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer taught me to appreciate the delicate touch of Mozart where every slight mistake was evident. That’s why, he said, the long-time but part-time BSO conductor Seiji Ozawa built his repertoire around German composers whose big orchestral sounds also hid mistakes.
Partnering with local businesses. The Thirsty Whale is underwriting tickets for everyone under 21. The Stadium is offering popovers. Restaurateur Michael Boland has been a key supporter. Cafe This Way was previously mentioned. They are the business people with a prescient view of the future, a Bar Harbor which will rely less on cruise ship visitation and more on the upscale dollar which such a music festival would generate into late fall.
In an open letter to the Bar Harbor community, Kiger wrote, “After a year of planning and listening to our audience and community, we are ready to run. Our theme for 2025 is ‘Growing our Roots.’ We have made changes to make it easier and more affordable for everyone to access the benefits of live classical music and music education.
“We have several FREE concerts and have not raised our tickets prices, despite the creeping inflation and economic uncertainty this year. We have also added several daytime concerts that finish before dark.
“The opera is back in Bar Harbor with matinee and evening shows, along with an annual OPERA BEVERAGE CONTEST in the restaurants on MDI so everyone can get excited for ‘The Elixir of Love’ July 15 and 16.
“We are also committed to using local services, vendors, and artists and keeping our spending as local as possible. Several world-class artists from Hancock County will the featured in concert, including Shane Ellis’ band Swingin’ Overtime, the folk ensemble Kotwica, and several individual artists and singers.”
Nan Lincoln wrote that Fortier came to Bar Harbor while it was still recovering from the fire of 1947 and noted “a certain seediness creeping into the downtown, with souvenir and tee-shirt shops, bars and pizza parlors replacing the high-end gift shops, restaurants and hotels that once catered to the summer residents and hotel patrons - Vanderbilts, Astors, Pulitzers, McCormicks and the like.”
“Lest one should think he only shared this music with those who could afford the price of a ticket, Fortier also created a free string orchestra concert at Blackwood’s Campground in Acadia National Park that was hugely popular."
Nan Lincoln wrote, “If some of us, and I expect one of them might have been Francis himself, were beginning to think he was immortal, we were devastated to be proven wrong when he died last month. However, those who have counted on the great music he brought to town year after year, after year, will be heartened to know that Allison Kiger has picked up his baton, and there will be a Bar Harbor Music Festival this summer and, one hopes, far into the future.”
FOOTNOTE: Allison Kiger will kick off this season with her performance July 3 at
Bar. Harbor Historical Society’s La Rochelle Mansion at 127 West Street, with guitarist Oren Fader performing Mountain Songs by Robert Beaser, Monhegan Suite by John Kuziak, L’Histoire du Tango by Astor Piazzolla and more.
Here are three audio clips of the Kiger and Fader duet:
tps://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsV9STQXDeYBMo9z0rQsHbC5rQRiry-3v?si=kcoYD1JDw6-G5RsS
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxPemM067yGiPYRKd-gBT6zCsVyTydFPgs?si=JfSDgj9Eb75OasuI
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxQufz71okXzn5H1P2cbHUH48_Ln7wrdrP?si=0x46skwjruqC0eoN
Kiger will also close the season Oct. 12 with “20th Century America through Music” - flute music of Piston, Copland, Barber, Capers, Coleman - at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church, 41 Mt Desert Street. he will be accompanied by Eric Thomas, clarinet, and Christina Spurling, piano.
Tickets may be purchased online.
There are many events in between those dates. The QSJ will have a fuller report on the opera at the Criterion in July and the swing dance at the Neighborhood House July 12. Stay tuned.