Avigdor “Vig” Schulman is still rockin’ it. This week, Cumberland Village Works, the production company he founded in 2005, announced the lineup for Rock the Block 2026 in the streets of downtown Cumberland on Aug. 15. It is the latest iteration of highly acclaimed outdoor music events created by Schulman, along with the oodles of great club shows he’s produced over the past two decades.
Schulman, who turns 77 this month, is widely considered the person most responsible for Cumberland becoming a musical mecca for musicians to perform and to live. According to current and former colleagues, Schulman still has his finger on the musical pulse and shows no signs of slowing down.
From music fan to music event producer
When Schulman spoke to The Discourse in mid-May, he was busy finalizing details for events on the May long weekend. This included two Indigenous artists — Garrett T Willie and Blue Moon Marquee — coming to The Waverley Hotel on successive evenings, as well as entertainment for the annual Cumberland Village Market Day with Angelica & The Challengers, a band he plays bass for, as the final act.
Plus, he had just returned from two consecutive weekends in Bamfield, first as technical director and producer for the Salty Hearts festival and the following weekend, he was contracted by Longshot Productions to stage manage and be the technical director of the Three Stars Dark Sky Festival music stage, which showcases Indigenous entertainment.
A life in the music business is something Schulman says he never could have fathomed, especially growing up in small Cornwall, Ontario. It’s true he had long been a diehard music lover, attending many festivals over the years including Woodstock in 1969, but it took a long time before he considered getting involved in presenting live music. He made his living as a furniture builder, which is what he was doing when he moved to Denman Island in the 1990s.
Denman is where Schulman transitioned from music fan to music event producer.
“I was always enthusiastically engaging with the music community so I got to thinking that I would like to help present events,” he recalls. Schulman did so with gusto, and soon developed a local reputation for putting on high-calibre events.
In 2004, Cathy Stoyko, a friend of Schulman’s on Denman Island bought an old Catholic church in Cumberland and turned it into a venue called The Abbey. Stoyko hired Schulman to build a stage at the venue, and says she wouldn’t have purchased the church without Schulman’s commitment to producing events there.
“Cumberland really wasn’t on the map at that point. It was still known as ‘Scumberland,’” says Stoyko, who is amazed at how Cumberland has become renowned for arts and culture, along with mountain biking, over the past two decades. “People started coming for events, and that was kind of the start.”
Schulman’s shows at the Abbey became so popular that they drew notice from the nearby larger-capacity Waverley Hotel, which eventually recruited him to start booking shows there. The word started to get around to agents and artists, who normally played just Vancouver and Victoria, that Cumberland was a special place to play.
“Artists have a really lovely time hanging out in Cumberland. We make sure that they know where all the good things are, and they usually end up coming back again,” says Schulman, who retired from furniture building when he moved to Cumberland.
Vig Schulman always has something cooking in Cumberland
Schulman’s reputation for bringing in fantastic music got a huge boost in 2005, when he made Michael Franti an audacious offer to headline a one-day Cumberland Village Works Festival. At the time, Franti was a darling of the peace and social justice musical scene hailing from San Francisco where he would attract tens of thousands of people to his annual Power to the Peaceful concerts, and Schulman says he was quite surprised when his offer was accepted.
A novice in putting on a festival at that scale, Schulman enlisted the help of Meaghan Cursons and others involved with the Vancouver Island MusicFest, and rented one of their smaller stages. Bringing in Franti marked a “signature shift” in the Cumberland cultural community, he says.
Schulman has put on a large outdoor event in Cumberland pretty much every year since. Over the years, the third weekend in August became associated with festivals produced by Cumberland Village Works. The Cumberland Village Works Festival was succeeded by Big Time Out (2007-2013), Atmosphere Gathering (2014-2017), Cumberland Wild (2018-2019, 2022-2023) and now Rock the Block (2024-present).
Rock the Block happens on Dunsmuir Avenue in front of The Waverley, which is handling communications and food and alcohol sales. Schulman says this arrangement allows his team, including his partner Melissa Roeske, to focus on the entertainment and staging.
“Rather than doing a larger thing in the [Village] park, we’ve decided to do something that makes it a little easier for us to do all these other things that we do in the summer,” Schulman explains. Other things he is involved with this summer include the free Indigenous Peoples Day celebration June 20 in Courtenay, the Elevate concert series, the Pachena Bay Music Festival on July 17-19 as well as several shows at The Waverley.
The climate for music festivals has shifted in recent years due to soaring costs, including insurance and artist fees and the U.S. exchange rate, and Schulman says it’s hard for him to see established festivals, such as the Kaslo Jazz Etc Music Festival, shutting down or on extended hiatus. To have longevity in what he’s doing, Schulman says he proceeds “carefully and cautiously” in producing events these days.
Cumberland is punching way above its weight when it comes to live music, Schulman says, with four venues within a block of each other often presenting music on a given Friday or Saturday night. Fortunately, he says there is a lot of collaboration between local event producers.
“We try to create enough that everybody is sated with their desire to come up and see amazing entertainment of a variety of genres and not oversaturate, so that most events do well.”
Treating artists with the utmost respect
Ellian Bell began working with Schulman in 2017, not long after moving to Cumberland to raise her daughter. She had been working in the music industry in Toronto, and she was surprised to learn that one of her favourite bands, Half Moon Run, was coming to a festival inCumberland to play at Atmosphere Gathering. She introduced herself and her music background to Schulman and has been working with him ever since as assistant promoter with Cumberland Village Works, taking on administrative and communications duties that she says aren’t Schulman’s favourite parts of being a promoter.
Bell says she loves how much Schulman cares about the music and the musicians.
“Vig is incredibly generous. He always pays the artists as much as he possibly can. He really treats the artists with the utmost respect, and that’s why we keep working together, because not everybody in our industry does.”
She also touts Schulman’s relationships with agents he has learned to trust over the years.
“When they say, ‘Hey, try this new band that we want to play in your area,’ he’ll give them a chance, even though we may not sell out the first time.”
Bell, who notes Schulman keeps hip to the latest sounds by going out all the time to live music including at shows produced by others, applauds his willingness to invest in developing a following for emerging bands.
She says Schulman has taught her to book bands based on how good they are live, and not just go after big names. Bringing in high quality music builds trust among local music lovers who will come out for bands they’ve never heard of, she explains.
“That’s been one of the reasons why we get so much incredible live music and how he’s built up this scene in Cumberland, which I wholeheartedly believe is almost 1,000 per cent just because of Vig originally creating this amazing music scene which has then been around so long it’s brought other musicians to move to the [Comox] Valley,” Bell says.
His ageless nature is infectious
According to Stoyko, who is in her 22nd year of running The Abbey primarily as a dance studio these days, Schulman remains an inspiration.
“He’s been a great mentor to people, myself included,” says Stoyko, encouraged as a dancer by Schulman who booked her at many events and festivals, often as the closing act. “When he sees young talents in the community, he will really encourage and often give them a featured spotlight at one of his events.”
“It’s his ageless nature that is infectious,” she adds. “He just does what he loves, and he doesn’t stop, and it is pretty great.”
According to Schulman, living in a dynamic multi-generational town with a sizable demographic of 25- to 45-year-olds, many of whom have moved to Cumberland either for the arts or mountain biking, helps him feel youthful.
“It’s who you hang out with,” he explains. “That gives me the energy and the desire to do what I’m doing right now.”
Putting on shows in Cumberland and elsewhere over the past two decades has taught him to prioritize working with people who are really good at what they do because it’s always a team effort to put on live music, he says. Another lesson gleaned over the years is to create redundancy at every level so somebody else can take over a role if needed. To facilitate that, he makes sure to put his knowledge down on paper and in the hands of people who can do it when he’s not around.
But he doesn’t plan to stop any time soon, as long as he is fortunate enough to have his health.
“What else are you gonna do?” he asks. “You want to still do things that you love doing right up until the lightning strikes and the goddess decides it’s time for you to go under the dirt.”
Editor’s note, June 4, 2026: This story incorrectly credited Cumberland Village Works with producing the music stage at Three Stars Dark Skies festival. Schulman was contracted individually by Longshot Productions to stage manage and be the technical director of the music stage. This story has been edited to reflect this correction.
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