A Time of Thanksgiving

It’s hard to believe that CMC BC has already sponsored four performances since the start of the Fall season, as well as hosting a reception for composers in Victoria. But already, here we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving, having just honoured National Truth and Reconciliation Day last weekend.

 

They make a very strange juxtaposition, those two holidays, coming one week apart. On the one hand, we are united across the country in being reminded of everything there is to be thankful for. On the other, we are called to acknowledge the deeply painful and horribly destructive truths of our Colonial past, long suppressed. And offered the redemptive opportunity to make efforts within our own lives and work to begin repairing that damage and rebuild relationships based on mutual respect and appreciation.

 

We are working on two initiatives this Fall that we are excited about in this context. The first is a new Enhanced Indigenous Residency we are kicking off in collaboration with the Victoria Symphony this month. The second is a new mural for our lobby we have commissioned from an extraordinarily gifted Indigenous artist that we are greatly looking forward to revealing in November. Both of these initiatives will help Indigenize our centre and forward the work we are doing on Decolonization, and both are undertaken with help from the Vancouver Foundation.

 

As BC Director of the CMC, I am extremely thankful for the tremendous generosity of individual donors, foundations, and levels of government that make it possible for us to be part of and support the vibrant new music ecosystem of this province. And I am deeply grateful for all of the friendships and relationships we have built over the past forty-plus years. Last year, individual donors contributed more than $100,000 to CMC BC, the most in our history. And for this, we thank every single one of you for your kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity.

 

We are grateful as well to the government bodies that provided additional supports during COVID necessary to keep the arts alive at a time people needed the solace and connection and beauty and inspiration the arts provide more than ever—the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Province of BC, the BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver, in particular. And we thank the City of Surrey and City of White Rock, which supported the Casse Tête Festival we co-presented in White Rock this past summer in partnership with that festival’s founder, Jeremy Stewart.

 

We are also deeply grateful to the BC Arts Council, the City of Vancouver, and the Vancouver Foundation, which supported our Reimagining and Revisioning process over the past year and a half. That work has led to our first-ever Strategic Plan, which will be rolled out after it’s approved by our BC Advisory Council later this month. And resulted in CMC BC completely reimagining our work in order to centre everything we do within the goals of Equity, Belonging, Decolonization, and Indigenization, so that true Diversity is the lasting result.

The Deux Mille Foundation has generously committed to supporting three free composition workshops taking place this year in collaboration with intima musica and Leslie Uyeda, next Spring with the Okanagan Symphony and Jennifer Butler, and in 2025 with partners still to be confirmed.

 

 

And most of all, we are grateful for the unbelievably talented composers that make their home in BC, some of the greatest and most innovative composers in the world, who contribute so much vibrancy and vitality to the work we do and to the cultural life of this province. Celebrating their creativity and your generosity, we have already produced 150 score videos since 2021, and are on track to produce at least 50 more every year going forward.

 

Thanks to individual donors like you, we have launched a new music video series in partnership with Redshift Music, called Duets, that will see ten videos created this year featuring works by Canadian composers for two instruments, building on the success of the Unaccompanied series. (Who knows, one day we might even tackle trios!)

 

Thanks to the support of the Osbertus Fund, held at Vancouver Foundation, we are partnering with more musicians and composers and ensembles and organizations in more places around the province than ever before through our Performance Sponsorship initiative, with more than twenty concerts sponsored this year in Powell River, Victoria, Kelowna, Penticton, Vernon, Kamloops, Courtenay, White Rock, Gabriola Island, and Vancouver.

 

Thanks to another donor, we were able to create a new $35,000 Endowment Fund this spring dedicated to providing a new annual scholarship — the $2500 Murray and Dorothea Adaskin Prize. Two other generous individuals fund the Pentland Prize, a $1,000 scholarship, and the Southam Prize, a $500 scholarship each year. All of these awards go to deserving students studying composition at BC universities.

 

Thanks to your help, we are also partnering with more music competitions than ever, providing awards for Outstanding Performance of a Canadian Work to encourage performances of Canadian repertoire, including the International Choral Kathaumixw in Powell River, the Kiwanis Festival, Vancouver International Music Competition, Pacific Rim International Music Competition, and the BC Registered Music Teachers Association Provincial Piano Competition.

 

Artists like John Oliver, Francois Houle, and Douglas Schmidt are rocking our Murray Adaskin Salon this month through our Artist in Residence program. And we are co-presenting a book launch for Max Wyman’s landmark new book ‘The Compassionate Imagination’ with the BC Alliance for Arts + Culture on November 1 at 5:30 pm.

 

In the meantime, we continue handing out awards through the Barbara Pentland Awards Program, making our space available through rentals and artist residencies, printing and binding your music, enriching our Digital Archive’s history of Canadian music in BC, and operating our free, public-lending library of 25,000 scores of Canadian music, all the while searching for new ways to bring your music to life and bring value to this completely commendable community of creators.

 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making it possible for us to be part of your world! Happy Thanksgiving!