The president of Lamèque's International Baroque Music Festival is hopeful the annual event won't be cancelled after a new board of directors was chosen at the recent annual general meeting.

Earlier this year, Jean Rene Noel said the festival was out of money and would be cancelled for the coming summer.

But Noel said it now looks as though it will go ahead this July, but on a much smaller scale.

"We are re-organizing the whole event solely based on community support and volunteer work because of course we can't afford to have employees anymore — even part-time employees," he explained.

"So for this year we are trying our best to raise enough money and looks like we'll be able to organize at least two concerts."

Noel said he has been impressed by the support that the Town of Lamèque and citizens have offered since word spread that the festival was broke and wouldn't go ahead this summer.

The town is providing the organization with an office, a telephone line and an internet connection.

Noel said the festival was a victim of its own success, and had become too large.

"Sometimes smaller is better and I think that we are really going to pay close attention to how much we grow and how much we manage the event, in terms of hiring people and starting to be a big organization where we can't really support it, so it's certainly a lesson learned but we are very hopeful."

The event is the longest running baroque music festival in Canada and Noel says in the past it has attracted more than 1,000 people to the small community on Lamèque Island for four days during the summer.