“I was president of CNMN from its inception in 2005 until 2014. I believe in CNMN because I believe that musical creativity can play an important and positive role in our society. However, we need to work together in order for new music to have more impact in Canada. This is why we created CNMN – in order to have a place for the entire community to work together: composer, performer, ensemble, improviser, electroacoustics, world, orchestra, DIY, whatever – it’s about musical imagination and human expression, not categories.
A key issue affecting new music in Canada is connecting more effectively to the Canadian and international public, Since 2011 CNMN has been evolving a new strategy called the Digital Content Initiative. We all know – without high quality digital representations of our work out in the big wide world, we are invisible. As a board member, my main goal is to move this project forward. CNMN now has a solid infrastructure and history, so I will use my experience and contacts built over a decade of cultural policy work with CNMN to get this Digital Content Initiative moving. This is a complex and daunting task, and made none the easier by the current political climate, but it is critical for the future of Canadian music.”
2014 — Final President’s Message :
“Over the past nine years as CNMN President, I have spent many hours thinking about musical creativity, trying to define it to ourselves, trying to defend it to funders and to the public, trying to articulate why we believe that unfettered musical creativity is so vital to our society. There is no single, simple answer. However, at its core, creating music for the love of the art of music is a striking social and political action. Creating music that tries to encompass the scope and complexity of the human condition is a big job, but that is what we have chosen to do. It is inherently humanist in approach, and is predicated on a society where the value of each individual is recognised. Art, including new music, is primarily about the human experience, not about the economic benefit or political power.
This is why creative art is often viewed as a menace to existing economic and political structures. We live in a society which has, for the moment, a reasonable balance between the two forces – the humanist vision and the economic / political vision. That balance, however, is constantly shifting.
I urge all CNMN members to remember, every time you write a new piece, or step on a stage to do a concert, or talk about the importance of music in our society, that you are part of the ongoing political and social discourse that is shaping the world we live in. New music has a role to play in this larger discussion, and it is important that we, as a community, take this role seriously. I believe that CNMN is ideally placed to be a leading voice in this discussion. I hope that my 9 years as President has helped to build both a strong, credible organisation and to make the case for musical creativity as a positive force for social development.” [2014]
“CNMN is the best way our community can move forward – by working together. Since its creation in 2005, CNMN has begun to create a strong, coherent voice for all forms of new music across Canada, and I hope to continue this work by working to improve our regional new music networks, by reinforcing our national network, by improving the CNMN infrastructure and by pushing forward with targeted lobbying campaigns at FACTOR, Heritage Canada, MusicAction, CBC and with a variety of national and regional educational partners. We can build on the success of our FORUM projects and create a positive sense of what new music, in all its forms, has to offer the Canadian public.” [2012]
“As one of the founding members of the CNMN I believe that new music can play a more vital, dynamic, positive and imaginative role in the cultural life of Canada. But we can only do this if we, as a community of creative artists, work together to make this extraordinary music more widely available to all Canadians. The CNMN is the best forum for creating this kind of collaboration, bringing together composers, performers, ensembles, improvisers, producers and educators to create a single, common voice for the cause of new creative concert music in Canada.” [2008]
Tim Brady is a composer, performer, artistic director and cultural activist based in Montreal. Working as a free-lance professional artist since 1980, he has produced 20 CDs, dozens of tours of Canada, the USA, Europe and Australia, and worked with major presenters and orchestras such as the Winnipeg Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, the Toronto Symphony, the SMCQ, VNMS, Festival Victo, New Music Concerts, le NEM, the Open Ears Festival, The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Topology and the ABC (Australia) and Radio-France. He was president of the CNMN from 2005–2014.