Brookes Diamond Productions

In the musical world, success demands talent, perseverance, innovation, market awareness and a bold spirit to succeed. Those same qualities have kept Brookes Diamond at the forefront of Nova Scotia’s entertainment industry, an industry he has helped pioneer.
The soft-spoken entrepreneur and his wife Fiona created Brookes Diamond Productions (BDP), one of the leading entertainment companies in Canada, more than 30 years ago. The innovative Halifax-based company has helped shape the musical landscape of Atlantic Canada ever since.

Just as that industry has evolved in recent years, BDP has responded to the changing tastes and economics of the marketplace. The company has evolved from an event producer to an artist-management firm into a full-service entertainment company, bringing a variety of projects to Nova Scotian stages, including the Halifax Comedy Festival, Rankin Family Tours, Hairspray and the critically acclaimed DRUM!

His efforts have been recognized many times, including awards such as East Coast Music Association Industry Builder, a TV Gemini Award, Canadian Manager of the Year,Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia’s Best Event Producer and Best Promoter.

Diamond considers himself a true son of Atlantic Canada. He grew up in Newfoundland and throughout the Maritimes — his father managed several hotels and restaurants. By the time Diamond was 19, the family had settled in Chester, where his father ran the Sword and Anchor.

The younger Diamond got his first taste of the entrepreneurial enterprise when a friend approached him about organizing a parade for Dalhousie’s annual winter carnival in 1971. The first-time event was a rousing success, and by the next year, Diamond was producing the whole carnival, including a concert of folk music at the freshly-opened Rebecca Cohn Auditorium. When he couldn’t locate any local professional folk musicians for the show, he turned to Montreal and booked Jesse Winchester.

Despite the wealth of local talent in Nova Scotia, there were few established professional musicians here, aside from the Singalong Jubilee crowd. That would soon be a’changin though. Diamond was hooked on the excitement and the potential of the business.
“I was just loaded with ideas,” says Diamond, in the sunny dining room of his Halifax home. “It was a very exciting time.”

It was after that concert that Diamond met three ex-pat Irishmen at a house party, who were performing in local nightclubs as Ryan’s Fancy. With Diamond’s knack for making a deal and booking a gig, the groundbreaking band was soon performing through Atlantic Canada, Europe and Ireland.

Diamond also conceived and ran the Atlantic Folk Festival in Hardwoodlands, N.S., toured the young Bruce Cockburn through eastern Canada and booked countless shows in scores of venues through the region.

But when Brookes first heard Rita MacNeil singing at a sound check for his Atlantic Folk Festival, everything came into focus. Soon Diamond was handling her growing career, helping create one of the most successful recording artists in the country, with gold and platinum records and selling out concert halls around the world.
And Diamond finally had the resources to build his company, hiring some of the brightest young management talent in the region and helping foster several young artists.

When Rita amicably left BDP management in the late ‘80s, Diamond refocused to develop new talent, including children’s entertainers Sharon, Lois & Bram, East Coast musicians Bruce Guthro and Aselin Debison, and comedienne Bette MacDonald.

Then in 1999, the horizon changed again.
BDP was awarded a contract by the Atlantic Canada Tourism Partnership to develop a major entertainment production. He’d been percolating a grand concept of melding the founding cultures of this province — Celtic, Black, Acadian and Aboriginal — through its one common sound, the drum. So with the resources of the ACTP contract, his concept was finally ready to come to life.

“We created the tourism show around the DRUM! idea. From the second the idea hit, it was clear there was something really special if the opportunity arose to do something with it.”

It was a major undertaking, bringing such an ambitious concept to the stage: complicated, expensive and logistically difficult. According to Diamond, it took five years for the show to develop into the critically acclaimed stage production now thrilling audiences across North America.

The streamlined company reinvented itself once again in 2004, focusing on producing shows and events: “DRUM! was basically taking over. “

Though BDP continues to produce tours by The Rankins and the Barra MacNeils, managing DRUM! has become the primary focus of the office. Staff is kept busy with the thousand details that need to be handled quickly and reliably — from raising the millions of dollars needed to stage the expensive production to marketing the show and handling the publicity.

To make DRUM! more versatile and open up new markets, Diamond has been able to tailor the production to fit the client’s needs.

“We’d been getting a number of calls from people who wanted DRUM! But to mount and stage the production with the whole cast was cost prohibitive. So we went to work developing a “suite” of Drum products.”

Diamond can offer an 11-person show called Rhythms of Nova Scotia (which tours through the Eastern U.S. this fall) and a four-person show DRUM!Power, which can work as a concert piece and also as corporate team-building presentation and also as school show.

Three performances over Canada Day 2009 in Ottawa introduced DRUM! to thousands of new fans. In mid-August, the production headlined the renowned Milwaukee Irish Fest for three nights, wowing the massive audiences at the top Irish cultural festival in North America.

Working with a dedicated staff out of their office in Halifax, Brookes and Fiona put in long hours every day to get all the work done — managing the details of today with the long-range planning for the future.

Diamond is particularly looking for to an eight-night stand at Halifax’s Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in late September, including two gala performances with Symphony Nova Scotia.

Those shows will bring the promoter full circle, back to the comfortable Cohn where it started.