Renovated Vancouver Creative Hub features new 40-seat concert salon, will host intimate recitals celebrating Canadian composers.

Vancouver, BC – The Canadian Music Centre in British Columbia (CMC BC) proudly reveals its completely renovated home, the Vancouver Creative Hub (837 Davie Street), which now features a 40-seat black box theatre, the Murray Adaskin Salon, an urban cultural hotspot for Canadian music and the local arts community. The newly upgraded CMC branch will open October 14, 2016 with the Murray Adaskin Celebration, marking the official launch of CMC BC’s inaugural performance series, the Murray Adaskin Salon Concert Series — four concerts coupled with four documentary film premieres dedicated to four iconic Canadian composers.

“CMC BC is thrilled to launch a new era in our history as we launch the Murray Adaskin Salon Concert Series in our new, modern and intimate performance space, providing a complete immersion experience for audiences of Canadian music,” said CMC BC Director, Sean Bickerton.

“Since 1959, the CMC has promoted our composers through an extensive lending library of their scores, and our Juno Award-winning label Centrediscs,” said Bickerton, “treasured resources we continue providing alongside our first-ever performance season and a range of new educational offerings and service enhancements. Through this evolution, we will have the opportunity to engage more deeply with the community in our mission to boost awareness around the exciting world of Canadian composition.”

The Murray Adaskin Salon is named for one of BC’s most-loved composers. With a new lobby, and a fully-equipped box office in partnership with Tickets Tonight, the venue is rentable by local arts groups at affordable rates serving as a much-needed accessible space for creative exploration right in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

A refurbished Heintzman Salon Grand piano, once played by Benjamin Britten, is the stunning centerpiece of the new theatre. Owned by Adaskin during the time he penned the majority of his great works, the keyboard was purchased by CMC BC from his estate in 2002. A revered educator, Adaskin taught many of today’s generation of BC composers, all of whom studied with him at the same keyboard.

At the Murray Adaskin Salon, audiences are invited to attend CMC BC’s Celebrating Our Legacy series. The series will present four recitals, each in tribute to an esteemed composer that left a lasting mark on Canada’s music landscape: Murray Adaskin, Barbara Pentland, Jean Coulthard, and Elliot Weisgarber.

A fifth celebration, for Rudolf Komorous, will be presented in Victoria on December 8, 2016, on the occasion of Komorous’ 85th Birthday in association with the University of Victoria’s School of Music in their Phillip T. Young Concert Hall.

Each performance will be curated by an Artistic Advisor appointed by CMC BC as a champion of Canadian music with a special connection to the composer they will commemorate. And every concert will also begin with the premiere of a CMC commissioned documentary on the highlighted composer produced by local, award-winning filmmaker John Bolton.

Along with its new performance space, CMC BC will welcome several service and infrastructure improvements. In addition to an upgraded, distance-meeting-equipped CREATE boardroom, new workstations and state-of-the-art score printing and binding equipment, CMC BC will introduce interactive public tours allowing visitors to engage with scores through onscreen presentations & listening stations. CMC BC will also re-launch its signature Composer in the Classroom program, an outreach initiative sparking student passion for music composition in Greater Vancouver schools.