I thought it would be helpful to provide a brief update on our plans for the rest of the summer as we take some time to allow staff a needed break and begin to prepare for the fall.
Today marks the last release until September of our Unaccompanied Online Concert Series, which has run continuously with one new video performance released every week since mid-March. Today’s release is The Confessions of St. Augustine , a dramatic but intimate conversation composed by Erika Raum and masterfully performed by Valerie Whitney on French Horn.
Many thanks to the support of Redshift Music Society, our partners in this project, and to Jordan Nobles, who has done such an extraordinary job of filming and recording the performances.
We are also releasing today the latest music video from last summer’s Jean Coulthard String Quartet Readings — Surface Fiction by Chris Albanese. Many thanks to composer Thomas Beckman, who has been the driver of this project to make a music video of one composition produced through those readings each year for the past three years, all of which have been lovingly filmed by Darko Sikman.
And today marks the final Centrepulse of the summer. We’ll relaunch Centrepulse and our Unaccompanied online concert series on Thursday, September 10. Our Library and Print & Bind services will be closed from this coming Monday, July 27, until Monday, August 10, and our office closed for all services the first week of August.
Barbara Pentland Library
But even as we pause for a much-needed break, we are also preparing to launch two major new programs in August. The Weisgarber Workshop, which features Edward Topp as Composer Mentor and the PEP Piano & Erhu Project of Nicole Li and Corey Hamm. Ten emerging composers have been selected and they will all begin work together early next month.
We are also beginning a new Anti-Racism and Indigenization Initiative next month, partnering with two extraordinary Indigenous arts leaders and an amazing visual artist and Black Lives Matter activist. Funded thanks to the generosity of the Vancouver Foundation, this initiative has three complementary tracks and will be entirely led and curated by our Indigenous and BIPOC partners, and will involve BIPOC creators and performing artists; our BC Advisory Council; and composers from this province and other regions of the country, which includes an exciting new project with Of-The-Now concert series in Victoria.
Taking a look behind the scenes, we hope to be able to announce our new CMC BC Admin in early August, a key position we’ve been without since early February. We’re grateful to Theatre Attendant Daniel Bartoni, who has been such a great help in the interim.
And we’ve successfully concluded our first test of the new Livestream system now built into the Murray Adaskin Salon. We’ll be using that system to broadcast our Weisgarber Workshop and, once perfected, we will start making it available for rental to other artists and ensembles of appropriate size as we enter the fall.
And finally, just to take a moment to say that we’ve all been through a lot together over the past four months. We hope you enjoy your summer and get some time in the sun. And we look forward to re-engaging with you and moving forward together into what we hope will become a brighter future as 2021 approaches.
In the meantime, please be safe. Be calm. And be kind to yourselves,
Sean