FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steering Committee Report – October 2015

Ottawa skyline

Mem­bers: Jen­nifer War­ing & Kyle Bren­ders (Co-Chairs), Jesse Stew­art, Stacey Brown, Ste­fani Tru­ant, Lori Burns – more info

Pre­lim­i­nary plan­ning began in 2014, but efforts were launched in earnest with a meet­ing in Ottawa at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa School of Music on June 26, 2015 with our part­ners on the ground and CNMN steer­ing com­mit­tee mem­bers, both in per­son and through skype. There the frame­work for FORUM 2016 was estab­lished – UofO as the main site with con­certs at the NAC, the Mer­cury Lounge in Byward Mar­ket, and anoth­er venue TBA.

The theme of FORUM 2016 is New Music and the Main­stream – an exam­i­na­tion not only of the rela­tion­ship of new music to main­stream music, but to main­stream soci­ety. This FORUM fol­lows the struc­ture of Calgary’s FORUM 2014, but atten­dees will find new recog­ni­tion of the impor­tance of impro­vised music with­in new music.

The FORUM will be packed with lots of inter­est­ing events: pan­el dis­cus­sions fea­tur­ing a wide range of guests (and some real sur­pris­es), por­trait ses­sions, net­work­ing ses­sions and lunch­es, and much more. Also in the works are a demon­stra­tion per­for­mance by Mud Lake Sym­pho­ny (mid­dle school stu­dents led by Jesse Stew­art), and an open rehearsal of pieces by UofO com­po­si­tion stu­dents (Thir­teen Strings led by Kevin Mal­lon). The very suc­cess­ful FORUM open Call for Pro­pos­als has gar­nered high qual­i­ty and inno­v­a­tive pro­gram­ming. We’d like to sin­cere­ly thank all the appli­cants as well as the inde­pen­dent nation­al jury, com­posed of a diverse group of new music pro­fes­sion­als, for their thought­ful participation.

We’ll be able to take in some great new music per­for­mances thanks to our part­ners who are pro­duc­ing evening con­certs dur­ing the FORUM: Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty’s School for Stud­ies in Art and Cul­ture in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ottawa New Music Cre­ators (a pro­gramme of impro­vised works fea­tur­ing Pauline Oliv­eros) and the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre Orches­tra (with Music Direc­tor Alexan­der Shel­ley and includ­ing a pre­miere by John Esta­cio, as well as a sec­ond cham­ber con­cert fea­tur­ing musi­cians of the NAC Orchestra).

We’d love to reveal more, but until all our fund­ing results come in we have to resist offi­cial­ly announc­ing the rest of the ele­ments – instead we leave you with bat­ed breath! Please con­tin­ue to check our web­site for updates.

Final­ly, we’re pleased to announce that Geof Hol­brook has been brought on board to work on pro­duc­tion, pro­mo­tion and tech­ni­cal direc­tion of FORUM 2016.

We’re excit­ed. Make plans now to be part of FORUM 2016, too, Jan­u­ary 14–17, in Ottawa. Vis­it our online sup­port let­ter page for ideas on how to get there.

Jen­nifer Waring
Co-chair, FORUM 2016 Steer­ing Committee

Please con­tact Geof Hol­brook for more information
geof@reseaumusiquesnouvelles.ca

Read past bul­letin entries from this committee:

FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – web page
FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Report – Dec 2014

 

Direct link: FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Report – Octo­ber 2015
Return to full Bul­letin – Octo­ber 2015