Edition: 20th Edition CNMN Bulletin | 14

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Table of Contents

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New Music Ini­tia­tive 2015: Bring­ing CNMN to CAPACOA
Sou­venirs of NMI2015
Prepa­ra­tions with the CAC for the Upcom­ing Fed­er­al Election

Reports from the CNMN Committees:

Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) Report – May 2015
FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
The Lan­guage Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015

Cura­to­r­i­al and Art Crit­i­cism stu­dents meet Con­tin­u­um in The OCADU Project
Want to get to know Circuit?
CNMN Needs You – Now!
Wel­come New Mem­bers – May 2015
Mem­bers’ Cor­ner – How to Submit

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20th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin – May 2015

As CNMN con­tin­ues to seek dif­fer­ent entry points with new com­mu­ni­ties and with a wider nation­al con­text, the inau­gur­al edi­tion of CNMN’s New Music Ini­tia­tive (NMI2015) has got­ten us off to a great start.

NMI2015 brought CNMN togeth­er with CAPACOA (the Cana­di­an Arts Pre­sent­ing Asso­ci­a­tion). CNMN was guest-cura­tor at CAPACOA’s 27^th annu­al con­fer­ence from Jan­u­ary 21 to 24, 2015 in Hal­i­fax. The theme of the con­fer­ence was “The Cul­ture of Convergence.”

Over 30 CNMN mem­bers con­verged with 200+ del­e­gates, many of whom were stake­hold­ers from the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al tour­ing per­form­ing arts sec­tor, includ­ing 120+ CAPACOA members.

CNMN designed events that brought togeth­er both its mem­ber­ship and, impor­tant­ly, the larg­er pres­ence of del­e­gates. The idea was to cre­ate a dia­logue about shared goals and chal­lenges with­in a larg­er body of artis­tic prac­ti­tion­ers. The pro­gram­ming aimed to encour­age inter­ac­tion and dia­logue in order to exchange knowl­edge and build trust. Work­ing togeth­er in this larg­er con­text, new music in Cana­da can become more inte­grat­ed with main­stream presenting.

CNMN’s events were very well received, almost always to full capac­i­ty and beyond. This is in part thanks to the CAPACOA team who were extreme­ly pro-active, pro­vid­ing us with great expo­sure by putting our pro­gram­ming up front and cen­tre, which in turn meant atten­dance to our activ­i­ties was fantastic.

These events included: 

(1) A nation­al pan­el of new music pre­sen­ters dis­cussed inno­va­tion in pre­sen­ta­tion. Véronique Lacroix, Lawrence Cher­ney, Tim Crofts, Gre­go­ry Oh and Kyle Bren­ders (mod­er­a­tor) shared knowl­edge and suc­cess sto­ries about audi­ence out­reach, demon­strat­ing how cre­ative new music can be a pos­i­tive force in the larg­er Cana­di­an society.

(2) A Crit­i­cal Response Work­shop: after an engag­ing 40-minute per­for­mance by Gabriel Dhar­moo, Tim Yerxa (Fred­er­ic­ton Play­house) and Judy Har­quail (Ontario Presents) lead a ses­sion where par­tic­i­pants, sit­ting in a large cir­cle, became con­trib­u­tors to a mean­ing­ful, in-depth obser­va­tion and reflec­tion of their expe­ri­ence of this performance.

(3) An Evening Show­case includ­ing Eve Egoy­an and David Roke­by, Saint Peters­burg and Quatuor Bozzini.

(4) There was a very inter­est­ing Inter-net­work ses­sion where CNMN mem­bers met with the dance net­works to hear about the excel­lent work they’ve done with pre­sen­ters around the under­stand­ing and pre­sent­ing of con­tem­po­rary dance, and how this could apply in dif­fer­ent ways to new music.

CNMN mem­bers also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take in all the oth­er con­fer­ence activ­i­ties that CAPACOA had to offer, such as: the one-on-one ses­sion with inter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pants from the Export Buy­ers Pro­gram, the inter­ac­tive ple­nary ses­sion with the Direc­tor of EmcArts, Richard Evans, the many evening show­case per­for­mances and net­work­ing lunch­es. It was just as impor­tant, as part of the NMI, for CNMN mem­bers to par­tic­i­pate in the oth­er con­fer­ence activities.

Hear Soundstream’s artis­tic direc­tor, Lawrence Cher­ney, make a 5‑minute pitch about their tour­ing project Encuen­tros: lis­ten here (scroll to 30:23).

And our very own board mem­ber David Pay, along with Lawrence Cher­ney, were live-to-air for the arts on CTV Morn­ing Live with host Hei­di Petracek, where they talked about the CNMN pan­el dis­cus­sions about pre­sent­ing new music. This was broad­cast through­out PEI, NB and NS.

We were thrilled to have so many CNMN ambas­sadors of Cana­di­an new music, experts in the field, who not only rep­re­sent­ed their own work but also rep­re­sent­ed the broad­er pic­ture of New Music in Cana­da at the con­fer­ence. As an orga­ni­za­tion, we can set up the pro­gram­ming, but the per­son-to-per­son inter­ac­tions are what make the con­nec­tions, and mem­bers real­ly brought ener­gy and enthu­si­asm and a will­ing­ness to strike up a con­ver­sa­tion with fel­low del­e­gates about what they do and about the excit­ing things their peers are doing in their regions of the country.

For a more per­son­able sense of what hap­pened at NMI2015, read what some of our CNMN Ambas­sadors had to say in the next seg­ment, Sou­venirs of NMI2015!

Many thanks to every­one at CAPACOA for their part­ner­ship as well as the Cana­da Coun­cil and FACTOR who helped make it pos­si­ble for us to bring so many mem­bers to the conference.

Direct link: New Music Ini­tia­tive 2015
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Mem­bers of the CNMN share their thoughts about the NMI2015 project as part of the CAPACOA con­fer­ence in Hal­i­fax, Jan­u­ary 2014. Thank you to every­one who shared this expe­ri­ence with us!

I would like to thank CNMN for the oppor­tu­ni­ty for Quatuor Bozzi­ni (QB) to attend and present at the CNMN Show­case as part of the CAPACOA con­fer­ence. This was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to recon­nect with some famil­iar faces asso­ci­at­ed with CNMN, but also to exchange ideas with oth­er pre­sen­ters and del­e­gates from across the nation.

The Keynote Lec­ture from Richard Evans was extreme­ly use­ful because it touched on chal­lenges fac­ing the Cana­di­an music indus­try as a whole, no mat­ter the size of orga­ni­za­tion or one’s role with­in each orga­ni­za­tion. The most per­ti­nent advice includ­ed: being amenable to changes in the mar­ket, find­ing new ways to engage an audi­ence as par­tic­i­pants in artis­tic cre­ation, and being patient to intro­duce small changes one at a time to arrive at a solution.

Some of the peo­ple that I met at the Keynote Lec­ture had attend­ed our QB pre­sen­ta­tion at the CNMN show­case, and it was great to be able to share our music with them and to give them an idea of the nature of our work.

The infor­mal net­work­ing at the hotel restau­rant after the CNMN show­case was love­ly because we could dis­cuss our cur­rent work with oth­ers, and also set up some future projects with oth­er CNMN mem­bers. QB also wants to be more involved in the Mar­itimes, so the set­ting of CAPACOA in Hal­i­fax was great tim­ing for us.

The dis­cus­sion with the Cana­di­an con­tem­po­rary dance net­works was espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing because they offered a mod­el of putting the pre­sen­ters first, and edu­cat­ing them about con­tem­po­rary dance, rather than just try­ing to con­vince them of one dance project over anoth­er. It was encour­ag­ing to hear that the pre­sen­ters became con­fi­dent in the lan­guage and aes­thet­ic of con­tem­po­rary dance, and that they were giv­en the dig­ni­ty to use their artis­tic dis­cre­tion to choose which dance projects they would present. As an artist, there are still some reser­va­tions about why more fund­ing would be used to sup­port the pre­sen­ters, and not the artist, but maybe fund­ing orga­ni­za­tions could be con­vinced to increase fund­ing to both.

I also watched the live­cast of Natal­ie MacMaster’s pre­sen­ta­tion, and it was great to wit­ness such an icon of Cana­di­an music. I had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Mac­Mas­ter in anoth­er con­text, and know of the high cal­iber of her pro­fes­sion­al­ism and musi­cian­ship. It was edu­ca­tion­al to learn from the lan­guage that Mac­Mas­ter used to describe her life as an artist to the pre­sen­ters, and how she describes some of the chal­lenges of being a musi­cian: e.g. tour­ing sched­ules, bal­ance with fam­i­ly life, keep­ing up qual­i­ty of per­for­mance. She nev­er used a con­de­scend­ing tone, and her approach was more human­is­tic in try­ing to open up dia­logue, rather than antag­o­niz­ing or focus­ing on some of her more neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences with presenters.

In all, the expe­ri­ence for QB at the CAPACOA con­fer­ence was a very pos­i­tive one. … We hope to con­tin­ue the rela­tion­ships and dis­cus­sions we start­ed at CAPACOA.

~ Alis­sa Che­ung, Quatuor Bozzi­ni

I went on Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 22nd. It was real­ly an inspir­ing day. I remem­ber com­ing home full of ideas, my head full of con­ver­sa­tions and new thoughts.

I start­ed out con­nect­ing with new friends and old at the break­fast for new del­e­gates, and then moved into the pan­el dis­cus­sion on pre­sent­ing. Just over an hour was not of course long enough to ful­ly cov­er the huge top­ics here (who is your audi­ence? how do you mea­sure suc­cess? how and why do you curate? what is the rela­tion­ship between fund­ing and pro­gram­ming?…) but I could tell from the atmos­phere in the room that every­one was delight­ed to have come togeth­er from across the coun­try to share ideas with peo­ple who do the same thing.

Richard Evans’ keynote speech was fas­ci­nat­ing. What I loved was that it was a “good news sto­ry”: yes, the arts world is chang­ing, but there are tools to meet, and even take advan­tage of, that change and the oppor­tu­ni­ties that come with it. He is a mas­ter of the flow­chart and the pow­er­point, and backed his ideas up with con­crete exam­ples that we could all relate to.

The [Crit­i­cal Response] work­shop on Gabriel Dhar­moo’s Anthro­polo­gies Imag­i­naires showed a way of react­ing to new work that forces you to go beyond the like/didn’t like response by answer­ing a series of ques­tions calm­ly and method­i­cal­ly and thus build­ing a nuanced and poten­tial­ly sur­pris­ing crit­i­cal response. I am going to use this myself when I see per­for­mances in com­ing months and I hope to use it in a class­room or work­shop set­ting too.

Last came the show­case per­for­mances, all by friends or acquain­tances. I was sad that there was not more inter­ac­tion after these per­for­mances between pre­sen­ters and musi­cians, as was the inten­tion, but the new music com­mu­ni­ty is small, and there is always an urge to con­grat­u­late a friend after their per­for­mance. Some kind of event fol­low­ing the show­case where we were teamed up with pre­sen­ters to dis­cuss in small groups what we’d just seen (or to apply the crit­i­cal response tech­niques from ear­li­er in the day) would have meant new music ambas­sadors real­ly spread the word more wide­ly about new music, and might make a great addi­tion to the nest CAPACOA event.

~ Simon Dock­ing, Toca Loca

It was real­ly great to see con­tem­po­rary music pre­sent­ed along­side more pop­u­lar offer­ings, and in a way that made it more acces­si­ble to all types of con­cert pre­sen­ters. The [Crit­i­cal Response ses­sion] after Gabriel Dhar­moo’s Anthro­polo­gies Imag­i­naires was a use­ful exer­cise to allow a wide range of audi­ence mem­bers to dis­cuss issues of con­tem­po­rary music per­for­mance in a deep­er context.

~ Derek Charke, Aca­dia Uni­ver­si­ty / AD — Aca­dia New Music Society

All across Cana­da, com­posers, per­form­ers and orga­ni­za­tions engage in their work with the same ded­i­ca­tion, the same pas­sion. The CAPACOA con­fer­ence allows us not only to take note of the health and effer­ves­cence of our nation­al music scene, but also to iden­ti­fy prob­lems with­in it and share strate­gies which will assure the con­ti­nu­ity of our musi­cal milieu.

It was an hon­our to present my project Anthro­polo­gies imag­i­naires at the “Crit­i­cal Response Workshop.”

~ Gabriel Dhar­moo, Com­pos­er / Performer

I found the par­tic­i­pa­tion at CAPACOA by CNMN heart­en­ing. It served as … an intro­duc­tion to how the exist­ing infra­struc­ture of com­mer­cial music pre­sen­ta­tion, some­thing that I know about from my part-time pop music career, might inter­sect with art music pre­sen­ta­tion, my more full-time discipline.

[…] I found the Thurs­day ses­sions orga­nized by CNMN to be provoca­tive and infor­ma­tive, and have helped me for­mu­late some ideas regard­ing upcom­ing pro­gram­ming and audi­ence out­reach with the orga­ni­za­tions I work with.

The [Crit­i­cal Response ses­sion in par­tic­u­lar] helped con­sol­i­date my think­ing about the place of new music with­in our cul­ture, both as a cri­tique and cel­e­bra­tion of our soci­eties com­plex rela­tion­ship to music, but espe­cial­ly our rela­tion­ship to unusu­al and unknown music. The mock-eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy [in Dharmoo’s per­for­mance] was both fun­ny and poignant in show­ing how the cul­tur­al trap­ping of new music can either make music more appeal­ing or more alien­at­ing. This made me con­sid­er the impor­tance of both com­mit­ting unabashed­ly to music out­side the pop­u­lar sphere as well as con­sid­er­ing how to frame new music pre­sen­ta­tions so that they can be read­i­ly appre­ci­at­ed by new audi­ences who aren’t famil­iar with the forms. It also made me aware of the dif­fi­cult line that any “inter­preter” of new music must walk when attempt­ing to explain unfa­mil­iar music to new audiences.

~ Lukas Pearse, Upstream Music Asso­ci­a­tion / sud­den­lyLIS­TEN and more …

I was priv­i­leged to per­form at the 2015 CAPACOA con­fer­ence CNMN show­case as part of a project called “Saint Peters­burg” with cel­list Nor­man Adams. It was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence shar­ing the stage with the Bozzi­ni Quar­tet and Eve Egoy­an and wit­ness­ing a slice of the breadth of new music in Cana­da. As an impro­vis­er, it was refresh­ing to be includ­ed with and pro­grammed with, new clas­si­cal music.

~ Tim Crofts, pianist

It is very impor­tant that Cana­di­an new music is a reg­u­lar fea­ture at CAPACOA. Through the repeat­ed pres­ence of the CNMN, mem­bers of CAPACOA will become aware of the orig­i­nal­i­ty and strengths of cre­ative work made and per­formed by Cana­di­ans. Pre­sen­ters will be stim­u­lat­ed and excit­ed to fea­ture new Cana­di­an work in their pro­gram­ming, bring­ing the world of new Cana­di­an music full cir­cle, from the com­mis­sion­ing of new works to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of it to audi­ences across the country.

~ Eve Egoy­an, Pianist

Many thanks for the invi­ta­tion to attend CNMN’s New Music Ini­tia­tive 2015 as a ‘new music ambas­sador’ at CAPACOA’s con­fer­ence. I thought the CNMN-orga­nized events very suc­cess­ful­ly high­light­ed the diver­si­ty of Cana­di­an new music — and I also appre­ci­at­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet and speak with oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers from across the country.

~ Steven Nay­lor, Com­pos­er / Per­former / AD – sub­Text Music & Media Arts Association

What a great time. Those who were just face­less names became friends and mean­ing­ful col­leagues, and so many tru­ly inspi­ra­tional words were exchanged. Just like music, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ideas are always stronger face-a-face. I can only hope I con­tributed a good frac­tion of the won­der­ful things I took away.

~ Gre­go­ry Oh, AD — Open Ears, Fes­ti­val of Music and Sound / Toca Loca / Soulpep­per The­atre — Res­i­dent Artist

I had the priv­i­lege of attend­ing the recent CAPACOA con­fer­ence in Hal­i­fax as a CNMN board mem­ber. This was the first time I’ve attend­ed CAPACOA and I great­ly val­ued the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet mem­bers of the new music com­mu­ni­ty from across Cana­da, along with pre­sen­ters and artists from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines. The ses­sions were infor­ma­tive and pro­vid­ed engag­ing dis­cus­sion. The new music per­for­mances and ses­sions show­cased the tremen­dous tal­ents and ded­i­ca­tion of the many CNMN mem­bers who par­tic­i­pat­ed. Con­grat­u­la­tions to CNMN on their very suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with CAPACOA.

~Po Yeh, New Works Cal­gary / Honens / Land’s End Ensemble

I found the CAPACOA con­fer­ence stim­u­lat­ing and pos­i­tive. In gen­er­al, I found the atmos­phere invit­ing and wel­com­ing. I enjoyed the var­i­ous ses­sions that I attend­ed. The best part for me was meet­ing the many per­form­ing artists who attend­ed and to speak with pro­duc­ers and pre­sen­ters from across the coun­try. This made me feel just a lit­tle more con­nect­ed to what was hap­pen­ing in oth­er parts of Canada.

~ Jan­ice Jack­son, AD – Voca­lypse Pro­duc­tions / Performer

Direct link: Sou­venirs of NMI2015
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Note: the 42^nd Cana­di­an gen­er­al elec­tion is sched­uled to occur on Octo­ber 19, 2015. With the elec­tion fast approach­ing, the CAC is look­ing for vol­un­teers to fill a num­ber of posi­tions as part of their effort to make sure the arts are on the mind of can­di­dates across the country.

On March 18, 2015 mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Arts Coali­tion (CAC) met by tele­con­fer­ence to dis­cuss issues relat­ing to the upcom­ing fed­er­al elec­tion. The Elec­tions Com­mit­tee of the CAC had analysed dif­fer­ent strate­gies to cre­ate a unit­ed arts front, not­ing: (1) this time around it may be dif­fi­cult for the arts to get media atten­tion; (2) the five polit­i­cal par­ties are not like­ly to share each party’s plat­form until into the fall campaign.

Two options were discussed:

1. Approach par­ties with three arts ques­tions and post the answers on websites
2. Instead of an arts-only cam­paign, con­nect with larg­er issues, such as: 
   1. Abo­rig­i­nal rights;
   2. Envi­ron­men­tal issues;
   3. Elec­tion reform and get­ting out the youth vote.

Gen­er­al con­sen­sus was that both options had mer­it, but that it was dif­fi­cult to agree on a non-arts issue.

In the sec­ond option, dis­cus­sion leaned towards con­tribut­ing to the efforts of Apa­thy is Bor­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in get­ting youth out to vote. As a non-par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion, it was favoured over oth­er sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tions. 

In the first option, the three arts ques­tions will be based on the CAC’s Rec­om­men­da­tions from Arts Day on the Hill:

• Increase the oper­at­ing fund­ing of the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts by $35 mil­lion, to the goal of $300 mil­lion, in the near future.
• Increase Canada’s pres­ence on the world stage in 2017 (sesqui­cen­ten­ni­al) with a spe­cial $25 mil­lion fund.
• Increase the fund­ing, and increase the alter­na­tive fund­ing, for dig­i­tal dis­sem­i­na­tion and Cana­di­an con­tent online.

For­mal rec­om­men­da­tions from the CAC’s Elec­tion Com­mit­tee are to be made soon.

Ques­tions or com­ments? Feel free to con­tact CNMN.

Report sub­mit­ted by CNMN board mem­ber Jen­nifer War­ing, with con­tri­bu­tions from Kate Cor­nell (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Cana­di­an Dance Assembly)

Direct link: Prepa­ra­tions with the CAC for the Upcom­ing Fed­er­al Election
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

What are com­mit­tees and who is on them? Since 2009, var­i­ous com­mit­tees have formed, some­times on a casu­al basis, some­times on a more con­tin­u­ous basis. They exist to focus-in on par­tic­u­lar issues – around areas of con­cern for the new music com­mu­ni­ty at large (such as the Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee and the Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive) or CNMN in par­tic­u­lar (such as the Lan­guage Facil­i­ta­tion Com­mit­tee). Or, they can be based around a par­tic­u­lar upcom­ing activ­i­ty (such as the FORUM 2016 Steer­ing Com­mit­tee). Any­one can be on a com­mit­tee, but one rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Board of Direc­tors (see our web site) is required. Mem­bers can pro­pose oth­er com­mit­tees to a mem­ber of the board.

Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) Report – May 2015
FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
The Lan­guage Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015

Direct link: Reports from the Committees
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Tim Brady, Chair

The Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) is a project, fund­ed by a $20,000 Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts grant, to look for new fund­ing and new struc­tures for the record­ing, dis­sem­i­na­tion, pro­mo­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of Cana­di­an “spe­cial­ized” music, in dig­i­tal content.

Basi­cal­ly – an attempt to find an alter­na­tive way to get our music out there (in Cana­da and inter­na­tion­al­ly), now that two key pil­lars of Cana­di­an music – CBC and Radio-Cana­da – have all but stopped record­ing music. It is a very ambi­tious, and a slight­ly Don Quixot­ian idea, but it is an absolute neces­si­ty for Cana­di­an music in 2015 and beyond.

Over the last 6 months the DCI has done a lot of work: fine-tuned our argu­ments, our sta­tis­tics and our “pitch” doc­u­ment (to pri­vate and pub­lic fun­ders); had very detailed meet­ings with part­ners in both Toron­to and Mon­tréal; and designed the tech­ni­cal “grant pro­gramme” we are propos­ing. Our con­sul­tant Pierre Lalonde has con­tin­ued his infor­mal dis­cus­sions with fun­ders and pri­vate part­ners, prepar­ing the ground­work for the proposal.

The DCI com­mis­sioned a musi­co­log­i­cal research doc­u­ment, in order to give aca­d­e­m­ic and sci­en­tif­ic sup­port to our argu­ments as to the val­ue of “spe­cial­ized” music. This doc­u­ment has been com­plet­ed, joint­ly authored by Mar­tin Guer­pin and Jonathan Gold­man of the Uni­ver­sité de Mon­tréal, and includes an analy­sis and bib­li­og­ra­phy of a wide range of stud­ies that have been pub­lished on the impor­tance and ben­e­fits of music and cre­ativ­i­ty. CNMN mem­bers are wel­come to freely use these doc­u­ment, and these argu­ments, when help­ing to sup­port the cause of cre­ative new music in Cana­da. Check out the report here.

We will start to have infor­mal meet­ings in June to dis­cuss this ini­tia­tive with poten­tial part­ners, as well as pub­lic and pri­vate fun­ders. The fed­er­al elec­tion will slow this process down – regard­less of who wins the Octo­ber elec­tion, all gov­ern­ment depart­ments are now in “wait and see” mode. No new deci­sions will hap­pen until after the elec­tion, in fact, things will only real­ly get back to nor­mal in 2016.

How­ev­er, we can get a sense of how our argu­ments work at these infor­mal meet­ings, so that we are as effec­tive as pos­si­ble once we get to the for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion stage.

The DCI is also get­ting inter­est from oth­er par­ties: we have been invit­ed to present the project at the Clas­si­cal: Next con­fer­ence in Rot­ter­dam May 20–23, 2015 and at the bi-annu­al Banff Opera Col­lo­qui­um with Opera.ca in July 2015. So the project is gain­ing momentum.

Tim Brady – May 5, 2015

Please con­tact Tim Brady for more information
tim@timbrady.ca

Read past bul­letin entries from this committee:

• Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) Study: The Ben­e­fits of Musi­cal Cre­ation — 20th edition
• Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) Report – Dec 2014 – 19^th edition
• Spe­cialised Music Dig­i­tal Con­tent Cre­ation Project – 18^th edition

Direct link: Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive (DCI) Report – May 2015
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Mem­bers: Kyle Bren­ders (Chair), Jesse Stew­art, Ste­fani Tru­ant, Jen­nifer Waring

Things are mov­ing for­ward for FORUM 2016. The steer­ing com­mit­tee has been in touch over the past few months and things are begin­ning to move.

First­ly, FORUM 2016 will take place Jan­u­ary 14–17, 2016 in Ottawa. Much of the activ­i­ty will take place at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa but there will also be a con­nec­tion with the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre, includ­ing a per­for­mance on Jan­u­ary 15, 2016 that will fea­ture a pre­miere of a new work by John Estacio.

The FORUM will be themed to look at the inter­sec­tions between the pop­u­lar and the not-so-pop­u­lar worlds that many of us float between. This is a broad top­ic that will come into focus over the next cou­ple months.

The begin­nings of a FORUM 2016 web page are now avail­able, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about the steer­ing committee.

Last­ly, FORUM 2014 launched the inau­gur­al open call for pro­pos­als. An open call for FORUM 2016 activ­i­ties is in the works, and we’ll be look­ing for pro­pos­als from the entire new music com­mu­ni­ty. The FORUM is nei­ther an aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence nor an arts market/showcase; it’s a hybrid that seeks to cre­ate con­nec­tions for every­one work­ing in the new music field. So start think­ing out­side the box, and stay tuned!

If you have any thoughts about the FORUM or would like to be a part of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, please con­tact me.

~ Kyle Brenders

Please con­tact Kyle Bren­ders for more information
kbrenders@gmail.com

Read past bul­letin entries from this committee:
FORUM 2016 OTTAWA – Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Report – Dec 2014

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

Mem­bers: Jérôme Blais, Stacey Brown (Chair), Louise Campbell

The goal of the Lan­guage Com­mit­tee is to sup­port CNMN in main­tain­ing its com­mit­ment to bilin­gual­ism, by pro­mot­ing aware­ness of lan­guage issues, assist­ing from time to time with minor trans­la­tion needs and, every two years, ful­fill­ing var­i­ous kinds of lan­guage facil­i­ta­tion roles at our nation­al FORUMS (for exam­ples, see FORUM 2012 and FORUM 2014). Com­mit­tee mem­bers are invit­ed to reflect on ways in which we can facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tions in both offi­cial lan­guages and con­tin­ue build­ing a nation­al net­work that can real­ly “speak” to all our members.

This com­mit­tee is active­ly seek­ing mem­bers who might be inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in any of the above dis­cus­sions and activ­i­ties. We are also con­tin­u­ing to build a list of mem­bers who are will­ing to occa­sion­al­ly assist with some vol­un­teer trans­la­tion towards their moth­er tongue (Eng­lish, or French).

Ques­tions? Think­ing about get­ting involved in the Lan­guage Com­mit­tee? We’d love to hear your ideas!

Please con­tact Stacey Brown for more information
sb@staceybrown.ca.

Direct link: The Lan­guage Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Mem­bers: Louise Camp­bell (Chair), Tawnie Olson and Jen­nifer Waring

The pre­lim­i­nary list of online resources for facil­i­tat­ing cre­ative music is now online and more acces­si­ble! Check it out here. The idea is that, when you host a cre­ative music class, les­son, work­shop, con­cert etc., you have resources at your fin­ger­tips to inspire you with great ideas.

One of the man­dates of the com­mit­tee is to share suc­cess sto­ries about pub­lic engage­ment. Past sto­ries have been about the John Adaskin Project, Toronto’s New Music 101, and I.S.S. Check out com­mit­tee mem­ber Jen­nifer Waring’s sto­ry about the OCADU Project, in this bul­letin issue.

We wel­come more com­mit­tee mem­bers! We need peo­ple from across the coun­try to pitch in, give their two cents worth, and give us a Cana­da-wide per­spec­tive. If you want to join the Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee, we want your ideas!

Please con­tact Louise Camp­bell for more information
mlouisecampbell@gmail.com

Read more from this committee:

• Cre­ative Music Edu­ca­tion Online Resources
• Cura­to­r­i­al and Art Crit­i­cism stu­dents meet Con­tin­u­um in The OCADU Project – 20^th edition
• Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee Report – Dec. 2014 – 19^th edition
• I.S.S. Is Some­body Singing – 16^th edition
• Toronto’s New Music 101 – 16^th edition
• Youth/Music Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee Reports (p. 5–6) – 13^th edi­tion (pdf)

Direct link: Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee Report – May 2015
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

By Jen­nifer Waring

This piece from the Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee describes a project mount­ed in Toron­to by Con­tin­u­um in 2011, when I was Artis­tic Direc­tor. It’s not a pre­scrip­tion for oth­ers to fol­low (though any­one is free to take up the idea) but rather a quick sketch of a fair­ly sim­ple project that broke bound­aries and some rules, and for those rea­sons got some notice. It also illus­trates that when you ven­ture out­side nor­mal prac­tices you have to com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly, because it seems that peo­ple will either remain stub­born­ly with­in the old men­tal ter­ri­to­ry, or feel­ing lib­er­at­ed will project onto the project things that aren’t actu­al­ly there.

Continuum’s OCADU project was an exper­i­ment in trans­fer­ring prac­ticed ways of per­ceiv­ing from one art form to anoth­er. Fourth year stu­dents in Crit­i­cism and Cura­to­r­i­al Prac­tice at OCAD Uni­ver­si­ty, were asked to pro­gram a con­cert and also to write the notes for the works. Fif­teen (pri­mar­i­ly young) peo­ple, intense­ly involved in visu­al art, lis­tened to thir­teen record­ings from Continuum’s reper­toire, and then made cura­to­r­i­al deci­sions about music and wrote notes – guides for oth­er lis­ten­ers. And they did this through lis­ten­ing alone – they were express­ly told not to do any addi­tion­al research. The pieces col­lec­tive­ly cho­sen were per­formed on a reg­u­lar Con­tin­u­um series con­cert (a wel­come col­lat­er­al effect being the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remount works, giv­ing our loy­al audi­ence a sec­ond hear­ing, the musi­cians a sec­ond whack, and help­ing to advance the idea of “reper­toire” in new music.) I chose the best “lis­ten­ing notes” of the OCADU stu­dents to use as pro­gramme notes – and since there were so many inter­est­ing notes, there end­ed up being three dif­fer­ent sets of pro­gramme notes. These lis­ten­ing notes ranged from metic­u­lous descrip­tion to sur­re­al stream of con­scious­ness; they all illu­mi­nat­ed some­thing about the pieces, much about the con­nec­tions between music and visu­al art, and also much about the indi­vid­ual writer. (Check out a con­cert pro­gram – PDF.)

What need­ed to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed bet­ter? The fact that it was called “The OCADU Project” primed some peo­ple (those who didn’t read beyond the title) to expect music played along­side a dis­play of art. So maybe it need­ed a dif­fer­ent title, or maybe it need­ed to be described in more ways more often. (There’s noth­ing wrong with pre­sent­ing music with visu­al art. But the aim here was to engage young peo­ple in lis­ten­ing and think­ing through writ­ing and mak­ing pro­gram­ming deci­sions.) Dif­fer­ent pro­gramme notes float­ing around the hall? I had hoped that peo­ple would swap pro­grammes, read their neighbour’s, maybe even ini­ti­ate a lit­tle save ‘em, trade ‘em. But, in spite of the direc­tions writ­ten in the pro­gramme and my instruc­tions from the stage, peo­ple most­ly just read what they had picked up at the tick­et table. If I were to run this project again (Con­tin­u­um came close to get­ting fund­ing to run it with a class of 300 phi­los­o­phy stu­dents every year for three years) I would sup­press the urge to wade into the audi­ence and swap pro­grammes for peo­ple – rather, I would just try to be clear­er. Then I would run the project reg­u­lar­ly so that peo­ple got used to the idea.

In just this one small project, fif­teen stu­dents wres­tled with what they were hear­ing, com­mit­ted their thoughts to writ­ing, and then half of them came to the con­cert. And the rest of us found out how they per­ceived a musi­cal expres­sion that is so famil­iar to us that we may be deaf to some of its mean­ing, or at least its effect. I think it’s worth repeating.

For more details about this ini­tia­tive, con­tact Jen­nifer War­ing at jwaring@interlog.com

We’re always on the lookout for more success stories!

If you have heard of or par­tic­i­pat­ed in an ini­tia­tive you have found par­tic­u­lar­ly inspir­ing sur­round­ing the issue of pub­lic engage­ment, please con­tact Louise Camp­bell — mlouisecampbell@gmail.com

Direct link: Cura­to­r­i­al and Art Crit­i­cism stu­dents meet Con­tin­u­um in The OCADU Project
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

The CNMN and Cir­cuit, musiques con­tem­po­raines have part­nered to pro­vide CNMN mem­bers access to a sig­nif­i­cant dis­count sub­scrip­tion rate to Cir­cuit, as well as one free issue of the mag­a­zine. Find out more here!

Direct link: Want to get to know Circuit?
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Mem­ber­ship dues for the 2014–2015 peri­od are still com­ing in via online and mail. It is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed! Those who still haven’t paid should have recent­ly received a reminder email with a copy of the invoice. Please try to set­tle dues this month.

Why? Read past pres­i­dent Tim Brady’s con­vinc­ing argu­ments from 2013 which still ring true today.

If you have any ques­tions, feel free to con­tact Stephanie Moore at assist@newmusicnetwork.ca

Direct link: CNMN Needs You – Now!
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Since Decem­ber 2014, CNMN’s mem­ber­ship has grown by 15 mem­bers. More mem­bers in our net­work means stronger rep­re­sen­ta­tion and con­nec­tion for our com­mu­ni­ty. We warm­ly wel­come all our new mem­bers, and we hope this marks the begin­ning of a long-last­ing and fruit­ful collaboration.

The new mem­bers are list­ed below, many of which have web sites for fur­ther infor­ma­tion. We also hope all our mem­bers get a chance to check each oth­er out – you can access a full list of mem­bers on our web site, view­able by cat­e­go­ry, region or name.

Who will be the next new member?

New Voting Members

New Supporting Members

Direct link: Wel­come New Mem­bers – May 2015
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015

Want to submit to the next CNMN bulletin?

Down­load the Sub­mis­sion Guide­lines avail­able at the top of our main NEWS page:

https://www.newmusicnetwork.ca/category/news/

Direct link: Mem­bers’ Corner
Return to full Bul­letin – May 2015