CNMN had a presence at the ISCM’s World New Music Days in Vancouver this past November (a great event mounted by ISCM Canadian Section and Music on Main.) There, as part of the “Awesome Talks” series hosted by the CBC’s Paulo Pietropaulo, we revealed preliminary findings of CNMN’s first-ever formal survey Pathways to a Life in New Music. Presenters of our actually pretty awesome data were Jennifer Waring (CNMN President), Mary Ingraham (Musicology Professor and Director of the Sound Studies Initiative, University of Alberta), and Ross Waring (President, Vividdata Visualization). (In addition to prime research partners CNMN and UofA, the study was conducted with the participation of the Canadian Music Centre and the Canadian League of Composers.)
We won’t go into study results here as they will soon be available on CNMN’s website, and are also slated for electronic publication by a music journal. But some of the findings that we presented in Vancouver were truly surprising. So much so that Paulo Pietropaulo included them in the opening essay of his weekly Sunday CBC broadcast. Interest in the findings also led to a lively session later in World New Music Days where people were invited by analytics/data visualisation specialist Ross Waring to explore the data through interactive visualisation.
As networking is what CNMN is all about, CNMN board members in attendance made the most of the networking opportunity at WNMD’s. (Beside Jennifer Waring, and of course WNMD’s Artistic Director David Pay, board members at the event included Juliet Palmer, Po Yeh, Jennifer Butler, Clemens Merkel and Megumi Masaki.) Contacts made there have helped shape the coming FORUM 2018 in Montreal and Victoriaville.
Jennifer Waring, president