Education
Music is a more potent instrument for education than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the most inward places of the Soul. -Plato
CMC BC offers a series of free educational programs for youth, including an annual eight-week Workshop offered online, and Composer In The Classroom offered in public schools around the province.
Composer in the Classroom
Composer in the Classroom, based on R. Murray Schafer’s book of that name, makes a composer-mentor available to teach a seminar in schools with the goal of empowering youth to create their own music.
A Composer in the Classroom seminar traditionally consists of eight, one-hour classes that culminates in a performance of the compositions created during the course. But the program is easily adoptable to specific circumstances and the needs of the youth involved.
Composer in the Classroom does not require any musical instruments, although these can be used, nor does it rely on any prior musical training or knowledge, although these skills can easily be incorporated. Instead, the program encourages students to utilize their own vocalizations and ‘found instruments’ in addition to employing percussive sounds they can create using their own bodies, for instance tapping their feet or snapping fingers or pounding their chest, for example.
In accordance with Schafer’s interests in acoustic ecology, ‘Composer in the Classroom’ also encourages students to learn to listen in a new, more self-aware way to the everyday ambient sounds that surround them.
The program can also make use of proportional representation and/or graphic scores to structure the student’s music and communicate the desired sounds to others assisting in performing their work.
The Composer in the Classroom program is made possible thanks to the generous assistance of the Government of BC, BC Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, the City of Vancouver, and generous patrons that share our values and support our mission.
Composition Workshops
Every year, CMC BC offers a free composition workshop focusing on a different combination of instruments or approaches to composition.
Jean Coulthard String Quartet Readings (2017, 2018, 2019)
Named in honour of a beloved BC legacy composer, the Jean Coulthard String Quartet Readings offered emerging composers the opportunity to develop a short string quartet under the guidance of a composer mentor, and then have their pieces read, rehearsed and performed by the Borealis String Quartet. The program allowed composers to revise and refine works in over the course of several weeks.
Composer Mentors: Rita Ueda, Farshid Samandari, Jennifer Butler
Elliott Weisgarber Workshop (2020)
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, we offered our first online workshop, the Elliott Weisgarber Workshop, led by composer-mentor Edward Top, and featuring the PEP Piano and Erhue Project. Weisgarber was the founder of UBC’s Ethnomusicology Department and was one of the earliest pioneers in fusing Japanese musical and cultural influences with western musical approaches.
The goal of the Weisgarber Workshop was to ask emerging composers to explore this blending of Eastern and Western influences, taking into consideration the issues surrounding cultural appropriation and constructive models for collaboration.
R. Murray Spatial Music Workshop (2022)
The most subscribed of any we’ve offered, this workshop was offered online, and was named in memory of the late R. Murray Schafer, a Canadian icon and pioneer in the spatial music world.
The seminar was led by Composer Mentor Jordan Nobles, one of the leading contemporary exponents of spatial music today, featured a series of conversations focusing on the practice and history of spatial music, and began by exploring spatial works from a variety of composers. Composers were invited to write pieces for a spatialized percussion ensemble featuring percussionist Katie Rife and were able to refine those works over the eight-week seminar.
Library Professional Placement Program
CMC BC provides library placement positions for graduate-level library students. Professional Placement students work directly with our highly-regarded BC Librarian on cataloguing projects for our extensive library of Canadian musical scores, our unique Digital Archive; and our Special Collection of manuscripts. Placement students gain invaluable professional library and archival experience and recommendations that assist them in obtaining professional positions upon graduation.