Jennifer Waring (ON) (President 2016–2019, Board Member 2014–2016)

2014 12 04 -

Mes­sage from the new pres­i­dent: Octo­ber, 2016

Past expe­ri­ence mount­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive projects like l’Oreille fine and SHIFT (with Con­tin­u­um) and the cur­rent Cana­di­an / Dutch project Trace only strength­ens the con­vic­tion that per­son­al con­tact cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion and exchange, all essen­tial to a vibrant new music prac­tice. This idea is fun­da­men­tal to CNMN’s FORUMs: col­lab­o­rat­ing local­ly to mount events; get­ting peo­ple togeth­er to share ideas, ulti­mate­ly mak­ing new things hap­pen. For the past five years I have lent my expe­ri­ence and ener­gy to CNMN, hap­py to see the orga­ni­za­tion estab­lish an exec­u­tive direc­tor, reach a wider Cana­di­an com­mu­ni­ty while mak­ing inter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions, and devel­op new off-forum year pro­grammes that help the com­mu­ni­ty grap­ple with impor­tant issues such as equi­ty, diver­si­ty, Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and green prac­tices in the arts. 

One of the founders of Toron­to-based Con­tin­u­um, Jen­nifer War­ing was for many years its artis­tic direc­tor. Under her lead­er­ship the group com­mis­sioned over 150 new works, toured Cana­da and Europe, and record­ed four CDs. Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary work became a focus with projects fea­tur­ing dance, film, instal­la­tion, and as well as archi­tec­ture, phi­los­o­phy and sci­ence. Inde­pen­dent of this activ­i­ty, with the Toron­to Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra she mount­ed the audi­ence engage­ment project Music by the Mass­es where the gen­er­al pub­lic cre­at­ed pieces under the guid­ance of pro­fes­sion­al com­posers for per­for­mance by trios of sym­pho­ny musi­cians. Renamed Com­pos­ing for a Change, the project has had suc­cess­ful runs with the Kitch­en­er-Water­loo Sym­pho­ny and Music Toron­to. A flutist by train­ing, Jen­nifer stud­ied in Ottawa, Lon­don and Paris, and holds a Master’s degree in per­for­mance from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. She was on fac­ul­ty at the Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music for 22 years.

Cur­rent­ly she is artis­tic co-ordi­na­tor with Henk Heuvel­mans (Direc­tor, Gaudea­mus) of Trace, a cul­tur­al project that rec­og­nizes the strong musi­cal con­nec­tions between Cana­da and the Nether­lands at the 75th anniver­sary of the end of WWII.  In 2020 – a sig­nif­i­cant anniver­sary both of Dutch lib­er­a­tion and the begin­ning of close ties between the two coun­tries – Trace part­ners across Cana­da and around the Nether­lands will mount sym­posia, work­shops, exhi­bi­tions, tours, and con­certs involv­ing com­mis­sion­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion and exchange.