New Places To Find My Music – The CMC

When I first heard of the Canadian Music Centre I was probably too young to be anything more than dubiously impressed. The CMC offers a litany of services which include the archival, copying, and lending to consumers and creators of written-down-music (They call it concert music but I still have vocabulary issues with that term – a subject for a longer and more confusing post). Myself being part of one of the first generations to think of the internet as a physical appendage, I was skeptical of what the CMC could do for me that I couldn’t do with a laser printer and a domain name. Surely the most able person to steward my catalogue music was myself, I thought. How could I expect another human to absorb this thankless task?

I was in attendance at the VSO’s second annual New Music Festival when my thinking was flipped on its tuckus. Maestro Bramwell Tovey was describing his experience of coming to Canada for the first time and trying to act on a desire to program Canadian music in his concerts. As a new migrant, there was a knowledge deficit to fill. Where to go? The Gap? Stephen Harper’s record collection? The answer was his local chapter of the CMC.

For a composer hungry to promote his music, there’s a vociferous forehead slapping directness to the Maestro’s tale. If there is an organization out there willing to work for and with me then it’s my own obliqueness that prevents me with accepting the favour. So with that, I’ve recently joined the ranks of CMC’s Associate Composers. Soon you’ll be able to browse, borrow, and bogart my scores from various locations across Canada. Fly my pretties!

In other news…

On Saturday, September 3rd at 2pm, the Vandelay Quartet will be performing my string quartet, Patrick Stewart Bakes A Cake at the Carnegie Community Center here in Vancouver (401 Main Street). It is being presented as part of a concert series, “Musically Yours”; a three-concert series that gives the residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood the opportunity to experience and connect with live music in an intimate setting in their own neighbourhood – for free. I’ve become immensely proud of this piece of music. It’s like a perfect butterfly net that caught all the colours I hoped to catch and instead of imprisoning them, did the exact opposite.

On September 9th, 10th, and 11th at 7:30pm Vox Humana Chamber Choir will be performing my setting of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the Dominion Astrophysical observatory in Victoria. It promises to be a stunning event as the choir will be performing a celestial themed program under the stars of the observatory.

Hope to see you there somewhere!