It’s All About You!

We have been taking time over the past year to consult widely and deeply with our patrons, our composers, our Advisory Council and the broader community. We want to thank you for sharing your voices and ideas with us. The result is that an exciting new vision for CMC BC is taking shape to guide us over the next five years. While staff still need to spend time over the summer interpreting the new direction in terms of specific programs and services, the broad outlines are taking shape in the new way we are engaging with the new music community across the province.

 

The essence of this vision is that it is all about you! We exist to support all of the creators, practitioners, ensembles, and organizations that help bring Canadian music to life and we want to make all of our resources available to help you do that across the province. The most profound change is that we have stopped producing our own concerts and composition education programs in favour of supporting and collaborating with others doing this where at least half the focus is on some of the most innovative composers in the world — the Canadian composers living right here in BC.

 

This new approach has led us to sponsor and support performances, festivals, competitions, workshops, lectures, films, and strategic planning across the province, offering individual solutions tailor-made to meet the specific needs of the creators and practitioners and organizations involved. This includes the new new-music series launched in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery last year. One of the four concerts we co-presented was Uninvited Voices in Music. We invited the Association of Canadian Women Composers to join us in co-presenting that concert featuring Canadian women-identifying composers to help celebrate their 40th Anniversary.

 

We also co-produced A Queer Recital with Queer Arts Festival last fall, donating all of the proceeds to Out in Schools. This past spring we co-sponsored Vancouver Pro Musica’s Sonic Boom Festival and offered highly reduced print & bind rates to the participating composers. And we partnered with the Victoria Conservatory of Music to present the Goodchild Grady Duo in recital last March.

 

 

We sponsored the Okanagan Symphony’s Northern Lights concerts in Kelowna, Penticton, and Vernon in May, featuring works by Imant Raminsh, Jocelyn Morlock, and Marcus Goddard. And we were one of the sponsors of the Remembering Jocelyn Morlock performance in May at the Vancouver Playhouse organized by her closest colleagues, printing programs for that remarkable concert as well.

 

 

In June we sponsored the Casse Tête Festival, a new experimental three-day music festival in White Rock. That festival we supported by co-applying for grants and providing financial sponsorship, letters of support, and liability insurance. And we are sponsoring Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra’s Summer Academy and FestivELLE, produced by Allegra Chamber Orchestra and Astrolabe Musik Theatre to celebrate female-identifying composers and artists. Look for Heather Molloy representing us there!

 

Next month, we’re sponsoring the final performance of the International Choral Kathaumixw in Powell River, which invites some of the best choirs from around the world to compete. While there I will be presenting the prized Elmer Eisler Award there that we sponsor for Best Performance of a Canadian Composition at the final gala concert. On my way, I’ll be presenting a few of our documentary films and giving a talk on Canadian composers to students at this summers Comox Valley Youth Music Centre.

 

This Fall, we are sponsoring a performance of Rita Ueda’s ‘The Shape of My Mother’s Eye’ on Gabriola Island, and co-producing a composition workshop with Musica Intima in our Murray Adaskin Salon, as well as making music videos of the works created.

 

We are producing ten new music videos this year in collaboration with Redshift Music Society for a new Duets series featuring two musicians performing Canadian works, and creating fifty more score videos, with a total of 135 produced so far. This month we also released our free CD Unaccompanied, produced in collaboration with the Redshift label, featuring seventeen of our jointly produced Unaccompanied recordings for solo instrument.

 

 

 

We presented Barbara Pentland Awards for Outstanding Performance of a Canadian work to winners of VAYA Festivals, and Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Canadian Music to John Korsrud and the Hard Rubber Orchestra, City Opera Vancouver, and Musica Intima this Spring. And we presented $4,000 in scholarships to three outstanding young composers selected by the faculty at SFU— Jami Reimer, Kittie Cooper, and Stella Song — fostering the next generation of composers and audience for new music.

 

We have launched a new Sonic Creativity Resources Project in partnership with the Victoria Conservatory of Music and three highly experienced music educators — composers Jennifer Butler, Daniel Brandes, and Hussein Jan Mohamed. Our shared goal is to develop resources we can provide to teachers and music specialists in schools that would help them foster listening and sonic creativity in the classroom, with the goal of expanding on our traditional Composer in the Classroom program to impact more students across the province of BC.

 

We have had a large mural of R. Murray Schafer’s graphic score Sun: A Composition for Choir painted onto the main wall greeting visitors as they enter CMC BC’s centre in Vancouver. And this Fall, a companion piece celebrating the Sun and music will be painted by Indigenous mural artist Carrielynn Victor, a descendant of Coast Salish ancestors.

 

 

Through our participation in the committee overseeing the Hugh Davidson Fund this year, held at the Victoria Foundation, we have or will approve grants to support the commission of five new orchestral works by the Victoria Symphony and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. In addition, our Artist in Residence program will help six creators and practitioners develop new work and explore their own creativity this year.

 

Every two weeks we promote all of the performances and events, video and CD releases featuring Canadian music along with news and opportunities for composer across the province of BC in our free enews Centrepulse.

 

And we continue to provide the best print and binding service for music scores and parts in BC for greatly reduced cost thanks to our generous paper supplier c-pac, and our Murray Adaskin Salon remains available for rental at heavily subsidized rates.

 

How are we able to do all this with such a small team? Thanks to the generous support of our funders, including Canadian Heritage, BC Arts Council, the Government of BC, the City of Vancouver, City of Surrey, City of White Rock, the Osbertus Fund, Dorothea Adaskin, the Vancouver Foundation, the Deux Mille Foundation, ultra-high-quality paper suppliers c-pac, Geoffrey E. Newman, Martha Lou Henley and the donations, small and large, of the many kind and generous people that support the Canadian Music Centre in BC.

 

How can we help you? We’re eager to find out as we continue to explore more and more ways to support those dedicated to the art form we all love.

 

Thank you for everything you do. And thank you for your support!