Touring Network Meetings January 2016

Kyle Brenders

Dur­ing FORUM 2016 Ottawa, Kyle Bren­ders chaired a num­ber of meet­ings with over 20 mem­bers of the new music com­mu­ni­ty, with the inten­tion of devel­op­ing a tour­ing network.

The atten­dees rep­re­sent­ed a diverse spec­trum of regions and styl­is­tic gen­res, as well as the dif­fer­ent roles impli­cat­ed (per­former, agent, pro­duc­er, etc.):

  • Mod­er­a­tor: Kyle Bren­ders – Com­pos­er • Per­former • CNMN board – Toron­to ON
  • Mark Seg­ger – Com­pos­er • Impro­vis­er • Per­former – Edmon­ton AB
  • Po Yeh – New Works Cal­gary • Land’s End Ensem­ble • CNMN board – Cal­gary AB
  • DB Boyko – West­ern Front New Music – Van­cou­ver BC
  • David Pay – Music on Main • ISCM World New Music Days 2017 • CNMN board – Van­cou­ver BC
  • Elliot Brit­ton – GroundSwell – Win­nipeg MB
  • Luke Nick­el – Clus­ter Fes­ti­val – Win­nipeg MB
  • Norm Adams – sud­den­lyLIS­TEN Music • CNMN board – Hal­i­fax NS
  • Dar­cy Spi­dle — OBEY Con­ven­tion – Hal­i­fax NS
  • David Dacks – Music Gallery – Toron­to ON
  • Ben Dietschi – Spec­trum Music – Toron­to ON
  • Andrew Kwan – Artist Man­ag­er – Toron­to ON
  • Mon­i­ca Pearce – Toy Piano Com­posers – Toron­to ON
  • Nilan Per­era – Son­ic Explor­er & Impro­vis­er – Toron­to ON
  • Tim Brady – Brady­works • CNMN board – Mon­tre­al QC
  • Isak Gold­schnei­der – Inno­va­tions en con­cert – Mon­tre­al QC
  • Véronique Lacroix – ECM+ – Mon­tréal QC
  • Alis­sa Che­ung – Quatuor Bozzi­ni – Mon­tréal QC
  • Clemens Merkel – Quatuor Bozzi­ni – Mon­tréal QC
  • Craig Ped­er­sen – Impro­vis­er – Mon­tréal QC
  • Jen­nifer War­ing – CNMN board – Dun­das ON
  • Henk Heuvel­mans – Gaudea­mus Muziek­week – Utrecht NL
  • Susan­na East­burn – Sound and Music – Lon­don UK

Dis­cus­sions began by intro­duc­ing what peo­ple around the table were doing, how they were tour­ing (or bring­ing in tours), what kind of tour­ing fund­ing they received (direct­ly or indi­rect­ly), their suc­cess­es and their challenges.

The dis­cus­sion quick­ly showed a real need to build a stronger facil­i­ta­tion for nation­al tour­ing for our com­mu­ni­ty, with the pri­ma­ry goal being to cre­ate a stronger nation­al pres­ence for new music.

Among the group, dis­cus­sions were very frank and hon­est, and this made the ini­tia­tive even more valu­able. With­in the 20 peo­ple in dis­cus­sion, the con­ver­sa­tion eas­i­ly split along styl­is­tic and ide­o­log­i­cal lines.

Con­se­quent­ly, the dis­cus­sion showed that the top­ic of nation­al tour­ing is one that needs to be dis­cussed on a larg­er scale, with a larg­er cross sec­tion of the net­work involved, in order to prop­er­ly take into con­sid­er­a­tion the con­trast­ing views with­in our milieu.

Next Steps

The con­clu­sion was to first work on build­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty for mem­bers of the net­work as they tour across the coun­try. Brain­storm­ing includ­ed the idea of CNMN to cre­ate a small fund, with a sim­ple appli­ca­tion process, that will pro­vide a token amount of mon­ey under the con­di­tion that the tour rec­og­nized it as “spon­sored by the Cana­di­an New Music Net­work.” This is a sim­ple solu­tion that can be accom­plished with lit­tle bureau­crat­ic work and a small por­tion of CNM­N’s budget.

In the long term, how­ev­er, the project needs to grow into a larg­er ini­tia­tive in order to address the fol­low­ing issues:

  • How can we devel­op a nation­al audi­ence for con­tem­po­rary music, through the sup­port of a nation­al tour­ing network?
  • How can we sup­port a tour­ing cir­cuit of new music that is built around project exchanges and reci­procity instead of just “mak­ing the rounds”?
  • How can we finan­cial­ly sup­port nation­al tours in order to mit­i­gate risk due to geo­graph­i­cal scope?
  • How can we cre­ate and ensure the man­age­ment of a new music tour­ing infor­ma­tion resource for those who are tour­ing and those who are look­ing to book tour­ing shows? (a tour­ing database?)
  • How can we cre­ate and share clear­er lan­guage about what “new music” is to a broad­er pub­lic with­out dimin­ish­ing the mes­sage of the music?

 

Direct link: Tour­ing Net­work Meet­ings Jan­u­ary 2016
Return to full Bul­letin – June 2016