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Stand On Guard for CBC original blog
The original blog, reproduced on this page (without the original formatting), is a storehouse/archive of much of the commentary on the CBC Radio Orchestra issue as published from March 31, 2008 to April 25, 2008. You’ll find reprints of articles, Open Letters from concerned listeners, famous musicians and others, as well as links to various resources. The entire blog is reprinted on this page. Simply search by author, famous person, topic, etc.
03/31/08
Open letter from Jocelyn Morlock
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: morlock [at] 11:24 pm
An open letter from Jocelyn Morlock (to various politicians, also to the CBC…)
I am writing to express my disappointment and grave dismay about the destruction of the CBC Radio Orchestra and the many misguided changes to the programming of CBC Radio 2 and to ask your position regarding these developments at our public broadcaster. As an avid listener, a professional musician, and a proud Canadian, I am distraught over these changes and what they mean for our cultural life.
Aside from the disbandment of the CBC Radio Orchestra, CBC Records’ classical music budget has been decimated, the CBC Young Performers Competition and the CBC Young Composers Competition have been eliminated, and future cuts will leave us without any classical or jazz music in the early mornings, the evenings, or at night. If this disaster had happened 15 or 20 years ago, when I was a teenager, I would never have known that most art music, both classical and jazz, even existed. It was CBC Radio that was responsible for my musical education, as I’m sure is true for many young listeners whose parents don’t have the money to take them to concerts.
In short, any time when a non-retired person might be able to listen to the radio, the CBC will be playing the exact same music as can be found on other (commercial) radio stations. This does not fulfill CBC’s mandate and does not defend a distinct Canadian culture in any way. It is not educational, intelligent, or enlightening and it is not particularly Canadian.
I am particularly concerned at what appears to be brash nepotism exhibited by Mark Steinmetz, the director of radio music at CBC. In choosing to play mainly pop music supported by the Songwriter’s Association of Canada, the board of which his father Peter Steinmetz is chair, it seems that he is unabashedly flaunting his power at the expense of our Canadian culture and heritage.
I’ve heard – to take a couple of examples from Steinmetz’s new list of supported pop artists seen on the expensive full-page ad that CBC paid for in the weekend Globe and Mail – Feist and Tom Cochrane many places besides CBC. They’re played on pop radio stations, in shopping malls and food courts, Feist also in Apple Ipod commercials, and while they may be Canadian, there is no reason to play them on public, non-commercial radio. We’ll hear them regardless, like it or not.
If the public library chose its books from the bestseller list, and that was all they allowed, the homogenization would be stifling. I’m sure there would be an outcry because no one would allow that kind of limitation to our culture. What Mark Steinmetz, Jennifer McGuire, and the other “leaders” of the CBC management team are doing is, sickeningly, the same thing.
As a concerned Canadian, I would like to know what you will do to preserve and support our distinct culture and heritage in the form of CBC Radio.
Sincerely,
Jocelyn Morlock
comments (0)
Composer Michael S. Horwood’s letter
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:54 pm
On Mar 31, 2008, at 11:16 AM, Michael S. Horwood wrote:
Apart from the deplorable news from the CBC and its last radio
orchestra, I have a few other things to report that further drive our
coffin nails deeper.
The CBS news program, “Sunday Morning”, continues to go down hill to
establishment “culture”. Years ago viewers would get quality pieces with
Billy Taylor interviewing important jazz musicians. More importantly the
show actually had segments featuring people like Libby Larson, Joan
Tower, Richard Danielpour, Don Knack and other contemporary composers
and musicians. That was a long time ago. Yesterday we got treated to a
piece on Mic Jagger and another on R.E.M. On what used to be an
interesting little oasis from the televsion junk yard, rock has now
taken centre stage and those of our ilk are no longer considered
important enough for TV space. Bill Flannagan has replaced Eugenia
Zuckerman with the “must have’s” of rock CD’s and the “who’s important
now” from that genre. What’s really driving the nails deeper is that
“Sunday Morning” STILL covers all manner of progressive, contemporary
visual art, artists and gallery showings, but nothing on the musical
equivalent. Why is it that the media can feature all manner of
experimental visual art, but ignore anything pertaining to musical
experimentation? Instead we get more rock, pop, schlock purporting to be
THE important directions music is headed.
* *
I recently came back from a wonderful vacation in South America. But….
In Buenos Aires I asked around for the best CD stores in the city. I was
directed to three stores. I can sadly report that there were NO
contemporary composers represented in the bins. I would have though that
there would have been at least a few by Ginastera, Villa-Lobos, or
wouldn’t-it-be-nice, Marlos Nobre, but no – nothing. Ok, there are
probably some interesting side-street places, but the general hotel
staff, store clerks etc. would never know about THESE kinds of specialty
stores. I must say, though, that I’m not really surprised. It just
reinforces how large the problem is and that it is not confined to
Canada or N. America, but is really a global issue.
Am I the only composer on this list that feels I’m part of a dying
profession, like a type-writer repairman? Or are you just going to tell
me: “Oh Michael, you are so pessimistic.”
=====>
Michael S. Horwood – Composer, retired professor of Music and Humanities.
Member of the Canadian League of Composers. Associate Composer of
the Canadian Music Centre. SOCAN Performing Rights affiliate.
Please visit my fantastically UPDATED Website: www.HorwoodComposer.com
(contains biography, reviews, list of works and instrumentation,
performances, discography, sound clips, search options)
comments (0)
Composer Chris Harman’s letter
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:42 pm
From: chris harman [mailto:REMOVED]
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 11:55 AM
To: mark.steinmetz[at]cbc.ca
Cc: jennifer.mcguire[at]cbc.ca; robert.rabinovitch[at]cbc.ca;
pherrndo[at]nac-cna.ca; Neil Gardiner CLC; Elisabeth Bihl
Subject: Dismantling of the CBC Radio Orchestra
Dear Mark,
It was with profound disappointment that I read over
the weekend about the impending demise of the CBC
Radio Orchestra.
The CBC Radio Orchestra has played a very important
role in my development as a composer, both
professionally and artistically. In the 1990’s and
early 2000’s, the orchestra gave the premiere
performances of my works Irisation, Concerto for Oboe
and Strings, Catacombs and Mabushii Sora E. All of
these works, (with the exception of Concerto for Oboe
and Strings) were commissioned by CBC Radio Music. In
addition to these premiere performances, the orchestra
also performed my work Iridescence as part of the
Avison Series in 1994.
The performance and recording of my Concerto for Oboe
and Strings brought recognition to all involved when
the piece was chosen as a Recommended Work at the
International Rostrum of Composers in Paris in 1994.
I am aware that the CBC Radio Orchestra has had a
similarly positive and influential role in the
development of many of my composer colleagues, most
notably Brian Current, whose work For the Time Being,
(performed by the orchestra as part of the CBC’s
competition for young composers in 2001) was also
recognized as a Selected Work at the 2001
International Rostrum of Composers.
Although I have not collaborated as often with the
orchestra in recent years, I remember well that it was
one of my favourite orchestras to work with, both for
the superior quality of their performances and for the
warm and amicable character of its musicians.
It is my opinion that the orchestra is something in
which the CBC should take enormous pride, and should
fight to preserve.
From the point of view of a classical musician living
and working in Canada, I see the dismantling of the
CBC Radio Orchestra as the culmination of a series of
steps (along with the dismantling of the competitions
for young composers and young performers, the dilution
of the music commissioning program, and the
dismantling of CBC Records) towards the complete
renouncement of a noble aesthetic that was once very
important to the CBC.
In the 1990 program booklet for the CBC National Radio
Competition for Young Composers, Denis Regnaud (former
head of Radio Music for Radio-Canada) wrote: “Through
commissions, recordings, productions and
co-productions of concerts and records, our public
radio network has played a major role in fostering
musical creativity in Canada.”
It seems to me that the CBC Radio Orchestra, more than
any other single entity perhaps, has successfully
embraced this aesthetic, and has been proactive in all
of the aforementioned activities, to the benefit of
many within the national musical community. To
dismantle the orchestra in one fell swoop would
suggest that the long-held aesthetic of “fostering
musical creativity in Canada” is something that the
CBC now deems to be irrelevant.
As a professor of music composition at the Schulich
School of Music of McGill University since 2005, I can
attest to the fact that there is no decline in
interest or commitment on the part of young people to
study classical music performance or composition, in
spite of the ever-changing cultural landscape and its
shifting priorities.
What is disappointing to me at this point is the
realization that many of these talented young
musicians will not be able to avail themselves of many
of the opportunities I had as an emerging artist, many
of them provided by the CBC.
If there is any single step that could be taken at
this point on the part of the CBC to reclaim the noble
aesthetic of the mandate outlined by Denis Regnaud in
his text from 1990, I would suggest that it should be
the preservation of the CBC Radio Orchestra.
Respectfully submitted,
Chris Paul Harman
Assistant Professor of Composition
Schulich School of Music
McGill University
555 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC
H3A 1E3
CANADA
2 comments
2 Responses to “Composer Chris Harman’s letter”
1. Emily G. Says:
March 31st, 2008 at 5:09 pm GREAT letter. Thanks for sharing it.
2. Kevin H Says:
April 29th, 2008 at 4:14 pm A clear and significant letter that should be considered by CBC.
Letters to MPs in British Columbia
Filed under: Who to contact
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:31 pm
Here’s a list of BC MPs. We’ve asked the Speaker for
e-mail and similar details.
Here too the url for same:
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimeP
eriod=Current&Language=E
IMPORTANT: Here the simplest mailing address for all
MPs:
Mail may be sent postage-free to any Member at the
following address:
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6
BC Members of Parliament:
Abbott, Jim (Hon.) Kootenay-Columbia, Conservative
Atamanenko, Alex British Columbia Southern Interior,
NDP
Bell, Catherine Vancouver Island North, NDP
Bell, Don H. North Vancouver, Liberal
Black, Dawn New Westminster-Coquitlam, NDP
Cannan, Ron Kelowna-Lake Country, Conservative
Chan, Raymond (Hon.) Richmond, Liberal
Crowder, Jean Nanaimo-Cowichan, NDP
Cullen, Nathan Skeena-Bulkley Valley, NDP
Cummins, John Delta-Richmond East, Conservative
Davies, Libby Vancouver East, NDP
Day, Stockwell (Hon.) Okanagan-Coquihalla,
Conservative
Dhaliwal, Sukh Newton-North Delta, Liberal
Dosanjh, Ujjal (Hon.) Vancouver South, Liberal
Emerson, David (Hon.) Vancouver Kingsway, Conservative
Fast, Ed Abbotsford, Conservative
Fry, Hedy (Hon.) Vancouver Centre, Liberal
Grewal, Nina Fleetwood-Port Kells, Conservative
Harris, Richard Cariboo-Prince George, Conservative
Hiebert, Russ South Surrey-White Rock-Cloverdale,
Conservative
Hill, Jay (Hon.) Prince George-Peace River,
Conservative
Hinton, Betty Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo, Conservative
Julian, Peter Burnaby-New Westminster British Columbia
NDP
Kamp, Randy Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission,
Conservative
Lunn, Gary (Hon.) Saanich-Gulf Islands, Conservative
Lunney, James Nanaimo-Alberni, Conservative
Martin, Keith (Hon.) Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, Liberal
Mayes, Colin Okanagan-Shuswap, Conservative
Moore, James Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam,
Conservative
Priddy, Penny Surrey North, NDP
Savoie, Denise Victoria, NDP
Siksay, Bill Burnaby-Douglas, NDP
Strahl, Chuck (Hon.) Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon,
Conservative
Warawa, Mark Langley, Conservative
Wilson, Blair West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky
Country, Independent
============
Chuck Strahl and Stockwell Day are the senior
political ministers for the Government in BC. We
should send a delegation to each. Ignore claims that
the CBC is ‘independent’. It is NOT independent of
Treasury Board, and that’s where the $ comes from.
Requests should be made of each MP that they take this
matter to their respective caucuses, and report back
to the letter-writer.
It is ALWAYS best if the letter-writer lives in a
given MP’s own riding. They check addresses.
Comments Off
Did the Hockey Strike Kill the CBC Orchestra?
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:48 am
Thoughts on hearing the announcement of the demise of the CBC Radio Orchestra
by Laurie Townsend
CBC and Hockey are two of Canada’s National institutions. Watching “Hockey Night in Canada” is a national pastime and the CBC relies heavily on the advertising revenues for the games they broadcast on TV. The CBC budget took a hard hit when the 2004-2005 season of NHL Hockey was cancelled. Is it possible that the CBC Vancouver Orchestra (recently renamed the CBC Radio Orchestra) was affected by the loss of these TV revenues? I could not help wondering about the trickle down effect during the hockey strike three years ago and it came to mind again yesterday [March 27th] when CBC executives came to Vancouver to announce the elimination of the CBC Orchestra to its musicians.
News reports indicate this was an economic decision. Since CBC music broadcasting has taken a radical turn away from so called “classical music”, the economic argument for killing the CBC orchestra is not honest. Stating they will use the CBC Radio Orchestra budget (less than 1 million dollars per year [later word indicated $600,000]) to record other orchestras is not honest either as they have, in recent years, cut that amount and more from what they have spent recording Canadian orchestras. Others have written about the loss of classical music programming from CBC. With a turn away from classical music broadcasting the death of the orchestra could be considered a natural consequence, one more in the series of deaths of CBC music radio shows.
Instead of grieving today, I want to offer you an example of the CBC Radio Orchestra’s impact on Canadian culture through the stories of a few of our students at the UBC School of Music. I suspect every similar school and institution across this country could share (and I hope they do) similar stories. Stories of how CBC Radio and the CBC Radio Orchestra have nurtured the young performing and composition talents of this country, each one an argument for our national public broadcaster to reinstate the orchestra and return classical and contemporary music programming onto radio and internet broadcasting.
The UBC School of Music has had four of students win at the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in New York, auditions so prestigious and famous for helping to launch international careers that the media always reports stories about the winners. Judith Forst (B. Mus 1966, LLD 1991) won in 1968, Ben Heppner (B. Mus 1978) won in 1988, Philippe Castagner won in 2002 while still a student (is now singing with the Met in New York and starred in the VOA’s recent First Nations setting of Mozart’s Magic Flute), and just last month current third-year student Simone Osoborne won. For Forst and Heppner, the CBC has nurtured and chronicled their rise to stardom on the opera stages of the world. Before the Met, Heppner’s talent was recognized by CBC when he won the CBC Competition for Young Performers in 1979. Both Heppner and Forst have been featured soloists with the CBC Orchestra in studio sessions for broadcast, CD recordings or public performances at various times throughout their careers. Philippe Castagner recently was a soloist with the orchestra and received national exposure through CBC. One of the mandates of the orchestra has been to help develop Canadian talent by providing performance opportunities and national exposure through broadcasts. Simone Osborne may be destined for a big career on world stages, but will her public broadcaster be one of those introducing her to Canadians and nurturing her career?
Like feeder teams for the National Hockey League, the CBC has trained and developed Canadian cultural stars (and journeyman musicians who populate chamber ensembles, orchestras and teaching positions in Canada and internationally) and trained every other kind of radio production and orchestra production team member. And here again, I can list UBC Music alumni; George Laverock and Karen Wilson, both former Producer/Managers of the CBC Orchestra in Vancouver, Don Harder, Recording Engineer for the orchestra and many members of the orchestra. Faculty members such as pianists Jane Coop and Sara Davis Buechner have been soloists with the orchestra and several members of the orchestra teach here as well. Sadly, other CBC farm teams have already been cut including the regional performance programs (West Coast Performance being the B.C region show) which was often a first recording experience for young musicians with exposure to a large public and continuing exposure for established musicians.
The current executives say the resources are so limited that they could not afford to continue having a broadcast orchestra. The amount reported is something less than one million dollars. An amount that is less than a starter house in North Vancouver. It is also less than what is spent to produce some 30-second TV commercials, and depending on the show, I understand significantly less than the cost of producing a single episode for TV. This seems such a small cost for the value that this orchestra provides for our Country. For years the orchestra has been threatened, yet past CBC executives with vision have had the courage, creativity and tenacity to keep it alive.
Did the Hockey strike kill the CBC Orchestra? I believe it led to cuts in many areas of CBC programming including the orchestra. Yet the Canada Council has recently received more funding to support Canadian Cultural institutions and even the B.C. provincial government has increased support for the arts. I would like to see the Canadian federal government increase funding to CBC so that it may fulfill its mandate to the Canadian public rather than squeeze budgets throughout the Corporation to the point of killing our national cultural jewel, the CBC Radio Orchestra.
Laurie Townsend
Concerts and Communications Manager UBC School of Music.
Formerly Orchestra Librarian of the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, Production Assistant for CBC Radio Music in Vancouver, Orchestra Librarian of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and holds a B. Mus. from UBC.
March 28, 2008
PS and A few facts and figures . . .
You can hear Simone Osborne sing the role of Rosalinda when UBC Opera Ensemble per performs a concert version of “Die Fledermaus” with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra May 15th at the Orpheum Theatre.
The Cutbacks have been going on for years
The orchestra used to mostly work in the studio recording repertoire for radio broadcast and LP/CD release.
15 – 20 years ago the orchestra recorded approx 30 studio sessions and about 3 public performances each year.
Over the years the number of sessions continued to reduce until a couple of years ago the orchestra was told it could only perform publicly and then were not given the administrative or promotional support to advertise the concerts sufficiently. And in spite of this audiences at recent concerts have been very good.
This year they are giving 6 – 8 concerts.
Recording orchestras across the Country has reduced drastically over the years
When I worked for the VSO the CBC recorded approximately 12 concerts a year.
Last year 5 were recorded. This year only the concerts of their Beethoven Festival will be recorded for radio broadcast.
Any list of artists who have performed as soloists with the CBC orchestra or have had works commissioned or performed by the orchestra in its 70 year history is a list of the who’s who of Canadian musical talent.
Some other CBC music programs cut or being cut: DiscDrive, Global Village, Sound Advice, Music in Company, Here’s to You, Studio Sparks, Choral Concert, Music for a While, Two New Hours, Symphony Hall, The Singer and the Song, Northern Lights.
Good Music is good music is good music. CBC Radio 2 (Ne CBC Stereo, CBC FM) has been broadcasting jazz, world, folk, roots and singer/songwriters in addition to its classical offerings for decades in programs dedicated to each genre. And all genres collected together with a huge audience following in shows like DiscDrive.
In September 2006 CBC recorded and broadcast the entire Wagner Ring Cycle from the new Canadian Opera Company’s theatre in Toronto.
Niche programming for an elite audience or exciting and risky programming packaged and promoted to bring the opera art form to a larger audience?
Cost – priceless
The CBC Radio Orchestra – also priceless
“Any public broadcaster,” wrote Lord Pilkington about the BBC in 1960, “whose aim is to give the public what it wants, first underestimates that audience, then debauches it!”
One outcome of CBC Radio 2’s heavy emphasis on “serious” music
I started listening when I was a teenager. CBC Radio 2 is one of the reasons I have dedicated my life to working in the arts.
What can you do?
1. Write!
Send letters, e-mails, contribute to blogs (NB: Letters sent by post are counted more!)
Talk to others and encourage them to write.
I heard that one person is sending a cheque with their letter stating the money is to be used to reinstate the orchestra.
I’m still drafting my letter [Mar 30] to the CBC Executives, CBC Board, Prime Minister and Heritage Minister etc. I’m going to include a cheque with each letter expressly for the reinstatement and ongoing support of the CBC orchestra. For the cheques to the govt people it will be made payable to the Receiver General (same as when you pay your taxes) with a strong statement that I want my tax dollars to support our Public Broadcaster; for the CBC folk the cheques will be made out to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
I did a quick calculation – at the current level of activity the orchestra costs each Canadian less than 2 cents a year.
$5 represents share for 250 Canadians, $50 represents 2,500 and $100 represents 5,000.
(some addresses are included at the bottom)
2. Forward this message
3.Attend the last concerts of the Orchestra
April 20th at 3:00pm at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Programme – Great Canadian Songbook II
A programme of Canadian popular singers interpreting the music of four classic Canadian songwriters in original arrangements for orchestra by Canadian composers.
A wonderful example of the kind of creative, interesting, innovative, risky and entertaining programming that only the CBC can do and has been doing for 70 years!
And a brilliant programming idea when faced with pressure from above dictating the shift in direction CBC music content was taking. The traditional audience of the orchestra and Radio 2 must all cringe at the idea of pop music on Radio 2, what way to turn an unpalatable dictate on its head.
Look out for listings of the the Fall series of concerts which will include their last concert in November
4. Buy recordings of the orchestra and other CBC recordings by Canadian Artists (while you still can)
ie – Mozart Horn concertos with James Sommerville and CBC Vancouver Orchestra which won Juno award or the latest recording of violin concertos with James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony which just won a Grammy Award. Note – CBC Records will no longer record music to be released on CD
Many fabulous CDs to choose from https://www.cbcshop.ca
Links to news stories of the announcement of the demise of the orchestra
http://www.straight.com/article-139062/a-battle-save-cbc-radio-orchestra
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/080327/canada/vancouver_bc_cbc_radio_orchestra
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080328.CBCSUB28/TPStory/TPNational/Music/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080327.worchestra0327/BNStory/Entertainment/home?cid=al_gam_mostview
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=a7f2ce94-9b9c-41ad-973b-9fdf54094e23
Names and Addresses you can write to. . .
President CBC
Hubert T. Lacroix President and CEO,
CBC
P.O. Box 3220, Station C,
Ottawa, Ont.,
K1Y 1E4,
Phone: (613) 288-6000,
Tim Casgrain, Chair, CBC Board of Directors and other members of the CBC Board
http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/about/directors/
The Two CBC Executives that came to Vancouver to tell the orchestra it was cut (they would have been the decision makers as well and requested board approval)
Mark Steinmetz, Director of Radio Music
P.O. Box 500, Station ” A”
Toronto, Ont.
M5W 1E6
mark_steinmetz[at]cbc.ca
Phone: (416) 205-3100, Ont.
Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director of CBC English Radio
P.O. Box 500, Station ” A”
Toronto, Ont.
M5W 1E6
jennifer_mcguire[at]cbc.ca
CBC/Radio-Canada – English Services
Audience Relations
250 Front Street West
P.O. Box 500, Station A
Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6
1-866-306-INFO (4636) Toll-free
416-205-6688 (TDD)
website: www.cbc.ca/contact/
CBC/Radio-Canada
Corporate Communications, Head Office
P.O. Box 3220, Station C
Ottawa, ON K1Y 1E4
613-288-6033 (General)
e-mail: liaison[at]radio-canada.ca
The Honourable Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900
e-mail pm[at]pm.gc.ca
The Honourable Josée Verner
Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
To send an e-mail from the Canadian Heritage web page go to this page. . .
http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/min/verner/contact/index_e.cfm
The Member of Parlaiment for your riding
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
attn.: Ian Morrison
Box 200/238
131 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 1R8
Fax: (416) 968-7406
E-mail: friends[at]friends.ca
Laurie Townsend
Concerts and Communications Manager
University of British Columbia
School of Music
comments (0)
A new “Digg” has been added to the story
Filed under: SPIN
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:52 am
I just checked the original press release announcing the end of the Orchestra,
http://www.insidethecbc.com/cbc-radio-orchestra-to-disband-to-fund-works-from-other-canadian-groups
and…there’s something new there right at the top: a little paragraph that says:
“Next year, the CBC will begin commissioning works from orchestras
across Canada. The money will come from savings it will find when it
disbands the Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra at the end of November.”
Isn’t that great? I wonder how they managed to negotiate that so quickly with all of those orchestras across Canada? Come on reporters: start asking questions! We know they are terminating one huge contract that employs a lot of people and has repercussions throughout the community; and a promise by a management team that has decimated classical and other art music and arts reporting that we are supposed to take at face value?
-JO
comments (0)
List of Contacts – National
Filed under: Who to contact
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:34 am
[Editor’s note: if you know of other, or more complete information, please write to the admin. If all you want is a list of email addresses, please see the April 2 post.]
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR
ALL MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT ACROSS CANADA
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E
Dear friends and colleagues,
Yesterday CBC management announced they are dismantling the CBC Radio Orchestra in the fall.
The CBC Radio Orchestra has commissioned and performed more Canadian music, and engaged more Canadian performers, than any other orchestra in Canada. It could easily continue to do so under the inspired direction of the dynamic conductor and music director Alain Trudel.
Please write a letter or email the CBC management and Members of Parliament.
This is an issue of cultural sovereignty. It is essential that this message be sent to Members of Parliament of all parties. The CBC belongs to the people of Canada.
Please be respectful and factual. When writing to politicians, ask for their position on the issue, and if they support you, to raise it in their caucus or in the house.
Please also consider joining the Facebook group “ Save the CBC Radio Orchestra:”
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10103441879
Facebook is very easy to join and no computer skills are required. By providing only a very small amount of information you can create an account and join this group and network very easily. I highly recommend it.
Please write letters to:
Mark Steinmetz, Director, CBC Radio Music
mark_steinmetz[at]cbc.ca
P.O. Box 500 Station A, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5W 1E6
Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director of CBC English Radio
jennifer_mcguire[at]cbc.ca
P.O. Box 500 Station A, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5W 1E6
GOVERNMENT OF CANADA MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT
All can be reached by regular mail, free of charge, at this address:
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Josée Verner, Member of Parliament,
Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages
Telephone: (613) 996-4151
Fax: (613) 954-2269
E-Mail: Verner.J[at]parl.gc.ca
E-Mail2: Min_Verner[at]pch.gc.ca
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Telephone: (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900
E-Mail: Harper.S[at]parl.gc.ca
OPPOSITION PARTIES
LIBERAL
Mauril Bélanger, Critic for Canadian Heritage, La Francophonie and Official Languages
Riding: Ottawa–Vanier
Belanger.M[at]parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office:
168 Charlotte St, Suite 504
Ottawa, ON K1N 8K6
(613) 947-7961
Web: www.mauril.ca
NDP
Bill Siskay
Tel: 613-996-5597
siksab[at]parl.gc.ca
Constituency:
4506 Dawson Street
Burnaby, BC V5C 4C1
Tel: 604-291-8863
Fax: 604-666-0727
Your Member of Parliament’s contact information can be found at:
http://canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html
If anyone reading this knows CBC staff, please talk to them and encourage them to discuss and make public their views.
Dr. John Oliver, composer
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John Oliver’s CBC Radio Orchestra story
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:20 am
My Experience with the CBC Radio Orchestra
by John Oliver
I’ve been lucky to work with the CBC as a composer on several occasions, the first of which was winning the Grand Prize at the 8th CBC National Young Composers’ Competition, a competition that was, along with the Young Performer’s Competition, discontinued a few years ago.
The CBC Radio Orchestra commissioned two pieces from me. The first work was “Unseen Rain” for mezzo-soprano and orchestra jointly commissioned by the CBC Radio Orchestra and the Music in the Morning Concert Society; performed by Judith Forst and the CBC Radio Orchestra under the direction of Mario Bernardi and recorded on CBC compact disk SM5191.
The second was a ‘tone poem’ on the creation story common to most West Coast First Nations’ Peoples called “Raven Steals the Light.” This work was broadcast to all 20 member stations of the European Broadcasting Union in a fantastic cultural exchange that brought Canadian music to Europe and new European music to Canada.
Working with the legendary mezzo-soprano Judith Forst and conductor Mario Bernardi on the first project and with conductor Jacques Lacombe on the second was an enormous pleasure. The musicians of the orchestra, many of them champions of new music in their own right, new very well how to rehearse the music, how to make it sound well, and, best of all, they had the spirit of collaboration.
Has this all come to an end? No more cultural exchange? No more such opportunities for real cultural development? Because “we can’t afford it?” Just like the federal government cut off international cultural funding unceremoniously last year when our authors were winning prizes in Europe; and they had to go to the USA embassy for the reception.
So I’ve been lucky. But a next generation will not have a National Competition in which they compete; they will not have an orchestra to play in or write for that doesn’t have to answer the the almighty dollar.
comments (0)
Sara Davis Buechner’s Statement
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:18 am
From: “Sara Buechner”
Date: March 27, 2008 11:57:46 PM PDT (CA)
To: “Kurth, Richard” , “Ball, Denise” , “Miles, Colin”
Subject: Statement on CBC Radio Orchestra by Sara Davis Buechner
Vancouver BC Canada
27 March 2008
Dear Richard, Denise and Colin:
I certainly do not presume that my modest opinion carries any public significance, yet I am moved to make an official statement of response to the outrageous news today of the termination of the CBC Radio Orchestra. And I am OK to be quoted on this matter. I guess in the coming days there will be some opinion put out there so I will put mine into the mix:
“In attempting to disband one of the finest orchestras on this continent, the CBC has shown clearly its disregard for its own country’s cultural legacy. They are abandoning their responsibility to the people whose best interests they are supposed to serve. I call on the CBC to immediately reverse this tragic and reprehensible decision.
“In my own musical career, I have had the distinguished honour of performing as piano soloist with over 100 different orchestras throughout the world. I happily rank the CBC Radio Orchestra among the top five of that group, in the company of the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and the New Japan Philharmonic of Tokyo. Quite apart from the province of British Columbia, the entire nation of Canada can be rightly proud of this incredible orchestra which is led by one of the finest young conductors living today.
“This decision by the CBC amounts to an act of cultural vandalism on a national scale. Imagine the Ontario Art Gallery stripping their walls of Lawren Harris and Emily Carr because big-eye pictures of animals and clowns sell better. Imagine our libraries tossing out Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood because they are sometimes tough reading — line their shelves with Harlequin romance novels that attract more readers. This is precisely what the CBC is doing to one of the irreplaceable musical groups of the nation.
“Beginning this Sunday afternoon with a solo recital in Vancouver, I will henceforth make a public statement of protest at every Canadian musical engagement upon which I appear — solo, chamber and with orchestra. I will collect signatures from my audiences to mail to both the CBC and the Provincial Government. And I call upon my fellow musicians in Canada to do the same. Let us make our voices heard, like an angry flood, against this cultural genocide.
“It is a sad day in the history of this country when artists have to stand up to defend their contributions against the very institutions which were founded to foster cultural understanding, emotional connection and pride in the Canadian national character.”
Sara Davis Buechner
Pianist
University of British Columbia, School of Music
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Welcome!
Filed under: About the Blog
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:18 am
Welcome to the Stand On Guard For CBC Radio.
This blog was set up by concerned listeners to CBC Radio. The medium may indeed be changing, but the quality of programming does not need to be sacrificed at the alter of technological development.
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PLEASE VOTE!
Filed under: •••General•••, Other internet resources, PLEASE VOTE!
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:16 am
Opinion Polls & Market Research
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Google Alerts uncensored #1
Filed under: Other internet resources
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:10 am
John Oliver is subscribing to Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts
with the search term “CBC Radio Orchestra” and posting them here, uncensored.
I’m afraid I don’t have time to create all the hyperlinks so you’ll have to cut and paste the URLs (web addresses) into your web browser.
CBC Orchestra Disbands?
By Andrew W.(Andrew W.)
Most comments fall into two categories, which are probably reflective of public opinion – cutting the CBC Radio Orchestra is outrageous, or cutting the CBC Radio Orchestra is a good thing becase taxpayer dollars could be more …
The Transcontinental
CBC kills radio orchestra
The CBC Radio Orchestra was founded by John Avison in 1938 and has had an
illustrious … As former CBC Radio Orchestra cellist Ian Hampton described
it, …
CBC Radio Orchestra to disband after 70 years | The News is …
“We know for example that for a concert that we fund through our CBC Radio
Orchestra, we can extend our reach to three by doing it through other
musical …
CBC Disbands Radio Orchestra « Ripple Effects
Another shocking news: The CBC Radio executives have just decreed that The
CBC Radio Orchestra is to be dismantled as of November, 2008, on the heels
of …
CBC Axes Radio Orchestra – rec.music.classical.recordings | Google …
VANCOUVER — The Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra — the last … The
CBC Radio Orchestra was founded by John Avison in 1938 and has had …
CBC Radio Two and the CBC Radio Orchestra
By Stephen Rees(Stephen Rees)
This is a letter I wrote to my MP If you do not know who your MP is click the title for the parliamentary search engine You may copy this letter of you wish, but a personal one may be more effective ============ …
Yet another blog for me
Why Is (Almost) Nobody Supporting the CBC’s Classical Music Cuts?
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
Why is it that the Save the CBC Radio Orchestra Facebook group already has over 550 members in its first day? The reality is that CBC have in one fell swoop alienated their core listening audience of Radio 2, made enemies of much of the …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
Canadian musicians, composers mourn demise of country’s last radio …
The Canadian Press – TORONTO
The CBC Radio Orchestra was formed in 1938 to showcase Canadian composers
and musicians, putting out dozens of studio and live recordings to acclaim.
…
CBC Radio Orchestra to disband to fund works from other Canadian …
By tod[at]insidethecbc.com (Tod Maffin)
The money will come from savings it will find when it disbands the Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra at the end of November. The orchestra is the last radio orchestra in North America. The CBC says the decision simply came down to …
Inside The CBC .com
CBC Radio Orchestra to disband
By Sam
“We know for example that for a concert that we fund through our CBC Radio Orchestra, we can extend our reach to three by doing it through other musical organizations,” said Jennifer McGuire, executive director of CBC English Radio. …
Xyre
RIP CBC Radio Orchestra
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
The Globe and Mail has confirmed that at the end of November 2008, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will disband Vancouver’s CBC Radio Orchestra, North America’s last radio orchestra. CBC spokesperson Jeff Keay on the CBC’s …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
Death of the Radio Orchestra
By Steve Mynett
North America’s last remaining Radio Orchestra, Vancouver based CBC Radio Orchestra, has been shut down. The culprit? You guessed it, budget cuts. While symphony orchestras make the majority of their revenue recycling a limited canon of …
We’re Not Wired Right
CBC Radio Orchestra Axed
By Stephen Rees(Stephen Rees)
I have just heard on the CBC Radio News that the last radio orchestra in North America will play its last concert this season. What on earth is the point if the CBC? Why are we supporting this organisation with our taxes? …
Yet another blog for me
Michel Vincent Blog
http://michaelvincent.ca/Newsblog/?p=59
The Canadian Music Centre’s Press Release on the CBC Radio …
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
Elisabeth Bihl, CMC Executive Director, believes that “the decision to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra must have been a decision made with little to no input from the Canadian public or our music community. The orchestra may have been …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
A CBC without an orchestra can be sound step for
Toronto Star – Ontario, Canada
Yesterday, our cash-strapped national public broadcaster announced that it
is disbanding the 70-year-old CBC Radio Orchestra this fall. …
See all stories on this topic:
Posted -32 sec ago
Owen Sound Sun Times – Owen Sound,Ontario,Canada
The CBC Radio Orchestra, which has 32 CDs to its credit, was formed in 1938
to showcase Canadian composers, musicians and Canadian content. …
See all stories on this topic:
Saving $600000 by Killing an Invaluable Cultural Reality is Detestable
By David Berner(David Berner)
I happily rank the CBC Radio Orchestra among the top five, in the company of the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and the New Japan Philharmonic. The entire nation can be rightly proud of this incredible orchestra which is …
David Talks/The Berner Monologues
CBC Responds…
By Michael Vincent
I just found a response posted by Chris Boyce, the Interim Director of Programming at CBC Radio on the Save Classical Music at the CBC facebook group, regarding the reasons behind the decision to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra. …
Michael Vincent – Composer Blog
Earle Peach on Saving the CBC Radio Orchestra
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
Vancouver musician and activist Earle Peach has a simple solution to save the CBC Radio Orchestra: get 20000 people to each donate $50 to the CBC, thereby maintaining stable funding of $1 million for the orchestra and ensuring its …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
Seventh day of Easter
By Fuzzy Coatimundi(Fuzzy Coatimundi)
Along with the cuts to classical music programming on CBC Radio Two, the CBC Radio Orchestra will officially be disbanded later this year. A sad time indeed. …
Rabid Raccoon Rantings
CBC Radio Orchestra to disband after 70 years
CBC.ca – Alberta, Canada
The last notes of the Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra will be heard at
the end of the fall concert season in November. The CBC Radio Orchestra was
…
See all stories on this topic:
CBC to dismantle radio orchestra
Globe and Mail – Canada
VANCOUVER — The CBC Radio Orchestra, the last radio orchestra in North
America, is being dismantled at the end of November. CBC executives flew
out to …
See all stories on this topic:
CBC axes North America’s last radio orchestra, insiders say
National Post – Toronto,Ontario,Canada
The CBC Radio Orchestra was founded by John Avison in 1938 and has had an
illustrious history. It originally comprised 25 musicians and was increased
to 35 …
See all stories on this topic:
CBC strikes sour note
Edmonton Journal – Edmonton,Alberta,Canada
Thursday, 35 members of Vancouver’s CBC Radio Orchestra were told in a
closed-door meeting that the final baton would come down on the storied,
70-year-old …
See all stories on this topic:
Musicians protest axing of ‘cultural icon’ orchestra
Vancouver Sun – Don Mills,ON,Canada
“The CBC Radio Orchestra is North America’s only broadcast ensemble, a
legacy of the days when radio orchestras were to be found all over our
continent. …
See all stories on this topic:
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CBC Mandate
Filed under: •••General•••
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:05 am
Mandate of the CBC taken from the CBC web site:
The 1991 Broadcasting Act states that…
“…the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains;
…the programming provided by the Corporation should:
1. be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
2. reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions,
3. actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression,
4. be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities,
5. strive to be of equivalent quality in English and French,
6. contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,
7. be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose, and
8. reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.”
===
04/01/08
Something happened this weekend that has infuriated me.
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:46 pm
by Karen Wilson, former producer of the CBC Radio Orchestra
In the Saturday Globe and Mail (page 2 of the Review section) CBC has taken out a full-page ad that says….in big bold print…..”we applaud the new CBC Radio 2”. It has the names of 43 pop artists and several industry people, including Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal Music. Yes, I bet the commercial record labels are eagerly awaiting the new pop music as it will translate into increased sales (as it has done with their classical arms). I feel it’s totally inappropriate for these labels to publicly support changes to public broadcasting….and terribly wrong of them to come out cheerleading for the program changes. I will be writing each of these labels to tell them I will no longer buy any cd’s or dvd’s from any of the above labels….and will likely boycott all Sony products from now on. This is certainly one way anyone who is unhappy with the new programming can protest….by writing them. And frankly, CBC should never have placed the ad…..all it will do is make people more furious over the changes. The ad also says “classical music on CBCRadio 2 will remain the most played genre on the network”….interesting turn of phrase….the only way this will be true is if they break down “pop” music into jazz, country and western, hip-hop, bluegrass, aboriginal….proving that the information that CBC is disseminating is all smoke and mirrors, not facts. Information can and is being manipulated.
1 comment
One Response to “Something happened this weekend that has infuriated me.”
1. Barbara Scales Says:
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 am Hello Karen and all, I think this assessment of the value of the CBC and the CBC Orchestra is very important. I am in Europe adn did not see the ad in the Globe. I am horrified that CBC is spending tax-payer’s money on an ad to promote pop music industry institutions whether they are performer business ventures or recording business ventures. I think there may be something unethical and perhaps illegal in the CBC using tax-payer’s money for this purpose. One thing that I am very concerned by is that we risk falling into musical “-isms” and becoming split amongst ourselves. Nothing woudl pelase the pwers of the pop industry more. We risk failing to see that this is not about violinists against banjo pickers; it is not about the merits of Claude Vivier against those of Leonard Cohen or Barbara Pentland aganst Stan Rogers. it is about Music for which money is a means to better health and well-being as opposed to Money for which music is supposed to be a means. It is not about any style of MUSIC – it is about a way of making decisions about what music to present based on the ideas of profit and power. It is not pop music per se that is the problem (some of it is delightful and musically rich – remember the BEATLES!) but it is about turning all reason for doing music into a means of making money. Too often in the past 10 years or so, we have seen our public institutions turn to making and saving money as the reason for making artistic decisions. INDEED money is a factor in any sane business of presenting the arts, but it can not be THE standard of success. We must all be careful because it is not just classical musicians who have been hurt by this way of thinking. In their time, jazz musicians, didjeridu players and banjo pickers have all been the ones to suffer by notions of power and money ruling the arts. We must band together as people in the service of music, one and all. And we must preserve the value of MUSIC, as Alain Trudel says in his wonderful letter, music of all genres. Let’S not forget that all music comes from the same sources and remember Duke Ellington’s thoughts on kinds of music! We must not begrudge others some share of the pie but make better music through embracing all music. Yours, Barbara
Headlines March 30 to April 4
Filed under: Other internet resources, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:47 pm
Listed in Chronological order from March 30, 2008
Changing CBC: The List
By Michael Vincent
The axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra: North America’s 70 year old last remaining radio orchestra and platform for countless premieres of new Canadian compositions 11. Gone are Music & Company – Tom Allen’s morning show, Here’s to You …
Michael Vincent – Composer Blog
Some Opinions, Either Way
By Michael Vincent
Yesterday, our cash-strapped national public broadcaster announced that it is disbanding the 70-year-old CBC Radio Orchestra this fall. This comes on the heels of significant changes to Radio 2 programming that include moving much …
Michael Vincent – Composer Blog
On the Alleged Blocking of Comments at CBC In-House Blogs
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
Thank you, everyone, for your support of the CBC Radio Orchestra and its role in Canadian culture. Be aware that censorship is going on at the www.insidethecbc.com site. CBC Executive Mark Steinmetz has been known to block “too …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
Did the Hockey Strike Kill the CBC Orchestra?
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
Laurie is the Concerts and Communications Manager at the University of British Columbia School of Music and writes about the importance of the CBC Radio Orchestra and its importance over the last few decades as a vehicle for emerging …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
Man, Im pretty bad at this. Kingston, and CBC
By Edsqu(Edsqu)
so, How about the axing of the CBC radio orchestra in Vancouver. When 40 musicians find themselves out of their main source of income in the blink of an eye you really realize you cannot take anything for granted in this career. …
Percussionist for Sale
The CBC Orchestra Plays Taps for Itself
New York Times – United States
The CBC Radio Orchestra, described as the last radio orchestra in North
America, is to be disbanded at the end of November, The Globe and Mail of
Toronto …
See all stories on this topic:
Catastrophe
By mrsokana
Much blather about redirecting the money, CBC Radio Orchestra was only about ever about music, and Canadian composers and it should be left well enough alone and effort instead made to entice people out of their living rooms to hear its …
Literature and general creative lunacy
CBC needs to be saved from its supporters
National Post – Toronto,Ontario,Canada
… one the decision to shuffle the programming on Radio 2 to reduce the
emphasis on classical music, the other to kill off the CBC radio orchestra,
…
See all stories on this topic:
Demonstration Against the Elimination of the CBC Radio Orchestra …
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
“Composers depend on the skill and dedication of such performers as the CBC Radio Orchestra for the production of their compositions, music which presents unique techniques and concept approaches, beyond the requirements of the …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
CBC Memo
By Michael Vincent
A memo sent to CBC employees regarding the CBC Radio Orchestra:. ‘Regrettably CBC Radio has decided it can no longer carry the cost of funding its own orchestra. This is no reflection on the quality of the Orchestra, which has done …
Michael Vincent – Composer Blog
The last radio orchestra in North America set to shut down
By juanesmusic(juanesmusic)
The money will come from savings it will find when it disbands the Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra at the end of November. The orchestra is the last radio orchestra in North America. The CBC says the decision simply came down to …
Juanes’s Music Blog
Complaining about the CBC
By Muzition(Muzition)
The main issues that people are having with the CBC are that they are canceling several long-running and popular shows, that they’ll play less classical music, and that they’re disbanding their 70-year-old CBC Radio Orchestra. …
Muzition’s Diary
Is There (still) No Such Thing as Bad Publicity ?
By info[at]bigsnit.com (BigSnit Media, Vancouver,…
So, I have to admire the media storm that’s developed over the changes to Radio 2 and over the indelicate evisceration of the venerable CBC Radio Orchestra. It’sa publicity bonanza. Radio ratings should go through the roof. …
BigSnit.com
Flanagan, Shreveport, And The CBC Radio Orchestra
By drew mcmanus
Save the CBC Radio Orchestra! group at facebook.com is more than 3300 members strong and public demonstrations are being organized as well. TAFTO 2008 contributor and author of The Collaborative Piano Blog, Chris Foley, …
Adaptistration
Vancouver orchestra protest brings 100 demonstrators
By tod[at]insidethecbc.com (Tod Maffin)
About an hour ago (at 10:00 am Pacific time), a protest opposing the looming shut-down of the CBC Radio Orchestra began in Vancouver. About 100 people were there. Some photos are below. A similar event is being planned for Montreal on …
Inside The CBC .com
2 comments
1. Robyn Thornton Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 4:41 pm I seem to be part of the majority who decry the abolition of CBC Radio Orchestra and the decrease in classical music programming. Disgraceful!
2. EmilyGray Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am Cool, you listed my blog here (Muzition’s Diary.) Thanks!
Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:03 am
From: Carolyn Cole ( Member of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra Committee.)
This open letter is written to Hubert Lacroix, Jennifer McGuire and Mark
Steinmetz on behalf of the 1100 members of the Organization of Canadian
Symphony Musicians/l’Organisation des Musiciens d’Orchestres Symphoniques du
Canada (OCSM/OMOSC)
Dear Mr. Lacroix, Ms. McGuire and Mr. Steinmetz:
The disbanding of the last of CBC’s treasures – the Vancouver-based CBC
Radio Orchestra – has the orchestral community and its supporters reeling in
dismay. The short-sighted political agenda that you represent is only too
thinly veiled by the stated need for the CBC to cut costs. Colin Miles said
it succinctly in his recent interview with the CBC when he said, “this is
not an economic decision … it is an ideological decision … to destroy
classical music.”
We assure you that you do not represent the interests of the listening
public with your decision to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra. George
Zukerman and Colin Miles both reflected so brilliantly on the great history
of this orchestra in leading the creative energy of the orchestral community
in Canada. Those who played, and those who heard the orchestra, under the
direction of John Avison, John Eliot Gardiner and Mario Bernardi can attest
to the amazing ability of the orchestra to cross through the many centuries
of “classical” orchestral music with ease and versatility. This orchestra
has always represented the highest of artistic standards and performance and
has stayed on the cutting edge – performing and commissioning new creations
by the best and brightest of Canada’s talented composers. Isn’t that
exactly what the CBC is supposed to be showcasing?
With its latest conductor, the orchestra was set to enter its most creative
era yet. Alain Trudel represents a unifying voice of a French-Canadian
performer, composer, and now talented conductor who so recently has taken
over the artistic leadership of the CBC Radio Orchestra – and now you have
destroyed that. Just as the Olympics head to the west coast and the world
will be focusing attention on Vancouver and Canada, you have the “vision”
that this is the right time to kill this icon of orchestral creativity. You
say that it is an economic decision, but you have not talked about the
amount of money that will be saved or what other steps might have been taken
to achieve the same cost reductions.
To say that we, the 1100 members of OCSM/OMOSC, are outraged would be to use
language that cannot begin to express the depth of our anger and anxiety at
the destruction of the CBC. The programming changes have rendered what was
once the most exciting and culturally creative radio broadcaster in North
America dull and lifeless. You have lost more audience than you will ever
gain by your changes. We urge you most strongly to reverse these decisions
and to create positive, sustainable artistic and cultural growth to benefit
all of Canada and all of mankind.
Sincerely, on behalf of our colleagues in OCSM/OMOSC,
Francine Schutzman, President
Daniel Blackman, 1st Vice-President
Michael Thomson, 2nd Vice-President
Robert Fraser, Secretary
Jeffrey Garrett, Treasurer
2 comments
2 Responses to “Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians”
1. Martha Hazevoet Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 am Folks, you are going about it the wrong way. It is no good whining to Mark Steinmetz, he has ice in his veins. Instead of howling against the storm, why don’t you organize yourselves, go to the CRTC and apply for a “classical music station” license, or whatever name sounds appropriate. You could start out with mainly playing recordings; then you already have a resident orchestra (rename the CBC Radio Orchestra); I am sure that Pinchas Zukerman would be happy to cooperate with his orchestra; Howard Dyck, I am sure, would lend a hand as would many other ex-CBC greats. You would need a government grant of course, and this would take some doing because I don’t think any of our political leaders know anything about classical music, but you could tell them that SOMEONE has to replace the CBC since it has self-destructed. You would have to make sure you get the OK to use the old CBC towers (for want of a better word) for broadcasting. They will be rendered useless anyway as I don’t see a rosy future for the CBC. If nobody takes up this challenge which the CBC is throwing us, we will just have to wait a couple of generations until somebody rediscovers classical music. Remember that the book burning in the middle ages, and indeed as recently as 1933 in Germany, hasn’t done any permanent damage. Stalin’s depression of sacred music and religion in the end came to naught. Steinmetz is small fry in comparison. My advice: Organize yourselves and DO something. Asking Steinmetz to reverse his decision isn’t going to work. Believe me, I have fought him for years.
2. site admin Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:33 am I like your passion. However most people realize now that this is a political issue and everyone is encouraged to contact their Member of Parliament. You may be right that if we don’t act now, we might have to “wait a couple of generations.” Our culture is under attack. My profession is under attack. Ultimately the issues revolve around why we have public broadcasting, and cultural sovereignty. Those in our society who do not believe in public institutions and believe that the private sector should run everything would be rubbing their hands in glee at the notion you suggest, especially the merger specialists who love it when a bunch of people do a bunch of work and then they can just come in and buy it when it is undercapitalized.
===
04/02/08
Lon Rosen
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:36 pm
Dear Mr. Lacroix,
Like many others, I am shocked by the recent news that the CBC Radio Orchestra is to be terminated. In addition, I have been disturbed for some time about the changes in programming which have been occurring on CBC Radio 2.
Let me first address the decision to replace classical music by “popular” music programs, a move which I call “lowest common denominator” (LCD) programming. This is a doomed strategy. There are dozens of pop radio stations out there, but only one CBC. Do you really believe that the CBC can compete with these stations on their terms? What is the purpose of the Radio 2 anyway? Is it to add yet another voice to the Babel of voices? I believe its purpose is to provide the beautiful arts, especially classical music, a national vision, cultural analysis, drama… Rather than being another competitor in the LCD race, the role of the CBC should be to provide cultural leadership.
For me, this LCD programming represents a great personal loss. For many years I have confidently turned to the CBC for companionship, news, ideas, and, above all, classical music. Lately, I have been changing to other stations. I mourn the (imminent) loss of Music for a While, Music and Company, Here’s to You, Studio Sparks, Sound Advice… It feels to me like the loss of a good friend, not quite a death yet, but more like an advanced stage of dementia.
As for the fate of the CBC Radio Orchestra, to kill this national treasure is a national disgrace. This wonderful orchestra offers superb performances which may be enjoyed live and across the country; it encourages and promotes the careers of rising young artists; it commissions many new works by Canadian composers; it provides an important income to outstanding musicians. All this for a mere $600,000 a year! In my view, it is a serious blunder to terminate this fine orchestra for reasons of false economy.
You have no doubt heard these arguments before. What you may not appreciate is how deeply we feel about the decline of our beloved CBC and how many of us there are.
We beseech you to reconsider these recent decisions. If, on the other hand, the real mission of the CBC is to self-destruct as a public broadcaster, then of course you should just ignore us.
Sincerely yours,
Lon Rosen,
Concerned Canadian
comments (0)
Kelsey Zachary
Filed under: Students Speak Up
Posted by: site admin [at] 6:50 pm
Kelsey Zachary
OCCUPATION: student – University of British Columbia Violin Performance Major
RELATIONSHIP TO CBC RADIO ORCHESTRA: Music lover, attendee, mentors within the ensemble
RELATIONSHIP TO CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION: Listened to CBC growing up in a small community where classical music was not easily accessible
WHY YOU WANT TO JOIN in protest: The CBC radio orchestra is one of the best large ensembles I’ve heard in Canada and employs musicians whose expertise I value as a music student. It’s a hugely important part of my education to be able to hear an ensemble that is that skilled. There are endless positives to the CBC orchestra (take for example their trips to otherwise musically isolated communities in the North) and if we lose it now, we’ll never regain it. I hope to stay and work in Canada once I complete my degree but with the continual axing of funding to ensembles like the CBC orchestra, the government has made it difficult for me to even contemplate staying in Canada.
comments (0)
Letter from Giorgio Magnanensi Re: April 20th CRO concert and dismantling of orchestra
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: morlock [at] 5:28 pm
I think this event is and can be a very important one, simply for the
fact that the decision arrived last week is exactly against and in
total opposition to what you, me, the orchestra and all the singers and
composers are trying to do here. It’s not just about defending an
ensemble, is even more than that and is deadly serious. I’m talking of
people that say no to the CBC Radio Orchestra in their blind and
insensible expression of a monocentric culture. The one which allows
itself to pour and spend million of dollars/energy, in the celebration
of it’s own power: see Olympic Celebrations, Afghanistan…
I absolutely and strongly oppose this decision because I think and
believe we have been working for the development of a culture that has
a democratic and progressive content as opposed to the demands of the
establishment that culture be self-serving or part of an industry.
Finally, I believe that we need to work to oppose the ontology that
comprises the metaphor of power and considers multiplicity as “mere”
form while relying on hierarchical systems of values, whose only
function is to control, analyse, validate and explain: high art, low
art, popular, intellectual, uptown, downtown.
As I already said I oppose it foremost because sadly I have the conviction that a society that is not able to acknowledge the importance of difference as the flower of any community, and further, that is not
able to value creativity, beauty, personal expression and the power of
imagination as the very relevant answers to the question arising every
single day in this dreadful world, is already doomed.
Giorgio Magnanensi
Artistic Director
Vancouver New Music
comments (0)
Open letter from Giorgio Magnanensi
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: morlock [at] 5:25 pm
Vancouver, March 27, 2008
Jennifer McGuire
Executive Director
CBC English Radio
P.O. Box 500 Station A
Toronto, ON
M5W 1E6
It is with great sadness and consternation that I received tonight the
news about the decision of dismantling the CBC Radio Orchestra. It
seems absurd and even redundant to remind ourselves how this wonderful
Canadian ensemble has been an extremely vital and productive force to
the service of Canadian musicians, performers, to new and experimental
ideas in composition and to the CBC Radio audiences in all the
provinces of our country and internationally.
The CBC Radio Orchestra has been fostering dialogue, exchange of ideas and
has been extremely important in making contemporary music practices a
vital part of Canada’s cultural life. The CBC Radio Orchestra is and
represents something more than just an orchestral ensemble; it embodies
that desire of exploration that is so much lacking in so many national
and international orchestral ensembles. It embodies and fosters the
desire of sharing and assimilating older and newer music traditions
together with the purpose of understanding various contemporary music
styles and ideas, presenting them to the national collective
appreciation while working to the advantage of an enriched awareness of
the value of difference. This is the real value of a living
tradition that Canadian musicians, composers and artists at large still
feed with great passion and imagination, this is a real value, which no
corporate profit will ever be able to buy or even produce.
I am appalled and frustrated by this insensible decision that undermines
the real values of creative work, and in the conviction that the
importance of difference is the flower of any society that is
able to value creativity, beauty, personal expression and the power of
imagination I strongly ask you that this decision be revoked. I ask you
to address the issues related to the CBC Radio Orchestra in a public
debate, in a discourse open to all the productive forces who have been
contributing to the relevant work that the CBC Radio Orchestra have
been producing, supporting and presenting in the last 70 years.
Yours truly,
Giorgio Magnanensi
Artistic Director
Vancouver New Music
comments (0)
More Posters to print
Filed under: Stuff to print
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:57 am
http://www.claireart.ca/links.htm
Thanks to Bill Horne of Wells, BC
comments (0)
John Kimura Parker
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:18 am
—–Original Message—–
From: Jon Kimura Parker [mailto:REMOVED]
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 9:52 AM
To: Hubert T. Lacroix
Subject: CBC Radio Two / CBC Radio Orchestra
M. Lacroix,
I believe that I speak for many Canadians in expressing my profound
disappointment with the CBC’s recent decisions on Radio Two, and the
proposed termination of the CBC Radio Orchestra.
I owe my career to CBC Radio – in the early 80s I toured Atlanta Canada as
concert pianist on Debut Atlantic, and had my first exposure to a national
audience on CBC Radio. As a Grand Prize Winner of the CBC Young Performer’s
Competition in 1983 I was given nationwide performing opportunities.
In my international travels I have always held such pride in CBC Radio. I
would say: “it is infinitely better than any American radio, public or
private. CBC Radio supports Canadian arts and artists and provides unique
programming not available commercially.”
Suddenly I cannot express these thoughts any longer.
Before the programming changes, Radio Two already addressed a broad
cross-section of style and taste and remained a cultural flag-bearer for
Canada.
Additionally, the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra is an extraordinary
orchestra. When I performed and recorded with them two years ago, they
played as one, in an incredible feat of musical ensemble, technical
excellence, and artistic integrity.
I cannot imagine Canadian musical life without this orchestra, and without
the programming that has made Radio Two the greatest radio of its kind.
I hope to see the day soon where any reverses of these policies could be
possible. Otherwise I believe that the CBC will have lost its soul.
Jon Kimura Parker
Officer of the Order of Canada
Concert Pianist
comments (0)
Email addresses – National
Filed under: Who to contact
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:02 am
Due to internet bot software that surfs for email addresses, I want to show respect for those we write to and so I have replace the “at” ([at]) sign with [at], and the “.” with [dot]. If you want to use the list, copy it into a text program, and replace all occurences of [at] and [dot] – with a space either side by the way – with “[at]” and “.”
Thanks to Alexandra Fol of Montreal for the list.
Best regards,
John
CBC
Richard_Stursberg [at] cbc [dot] ca, mark_steinmetz [at] cbc [dot] ca, jennifer_mcguire [at] cbc [dot] ca, ht [dot] lacroix [at] cbc [dot] ca,
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Verner [dot] J [at] parl [dot] gc [dot] ca, Min_Verner [at] pch [dot] gc [dot] ca, Harper [dot] S [at] parl [dot] gc [dot] ca, Belanger [dot] M [at] parl [dot] gc [dot] ca, angusc [at] parl [dot] gc [dot] ca,
RADIO-CANADA
liaison [at] cbc [dot] ca, auditoire [at] radio-canada [dot] ca, liaison [at] radio-canada [dot] ca, ombudsman [at] cbc [dot] ca, ombudsman [at] radio-canada [dot] ca
JOURNALISTS and NEWSPAPERS
opinions [at] metronouvelles [dot] com, info [at] metronouvelles [dot] com,
letters [at] globeandmail [dot] com, mcoutts [at] nationalpost [dot] com, mlederman [at] globeandmail [dot] com, jadams [at] globeandmail [dot] com, scormier [at] ledevoir [dot] com,
ppapineau [at] ledevoir [dot] com, fdoyon [at] ledevoir [dot] com,
sunletters [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, sunopinion [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, tabtips [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, provletters [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, smeurice [at] nationalpost [dot] com, mhiggins [at] nationalpost [dot] com,
sstinson [at] nationalpost [dot] com, wmoriarty [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, rguggi [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com,
submit [at] theherald [dot] canwest [dot] com, calgaryherald [at] reachcanada [dot] com, letters [at] thecitizen [dot] canwest [dot] com, psimpson [at] thecitizen [dot] canwest [dot] com, letters [at] thegazette [dot] canwest [dot] com, nwnews [at] cknw [dot] com, editor [at] punjabguardian [dot] com, newsroom [at] fairchildtv [dot] com, Shawtv4 [at] sjrb [dot] ca, editorvoice [at] hotmail [dot] com, newsrm [at] am1320 [dot] com, talk [at] cknw [dot] com, rod [dot] mickleburgh [at] globeandmail [dot] ca, claudine_viallon [at] radio-canada [dot] ca, info [at] straight [dot] com, editor [at] westender [dot] com, Hadley [at] cfun [dot] com, editor [at] thetyee [dot] ca, vancouver [at] broadcastnews [dot] ca, noconnor [at] vancourier [dot] com, canadanow [at] vancouver [dot] cbc [dot] ca, editor [at] vshinpo [dot] com, info [at] vanchosun [dot] com, editor [at] asianpacificpost [dot] com, news1130 [at] rogers [dot] com, cjjr [at] jrfm [dot] com, v-newsdesk [at] mingpaoxpress [dot] com, news [at] cknw [dot] com, connie_monk [at] bcit [dot] ca, news [at] channelm [dot] ca, vancouver [at] koreatimes [dot] com, bcnews [at] ctv [dot] ca, redaction [at] lexpress [dot] org, edit [at] worldjournal [dot] ca, sunnewstips [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, tara [at] qmfm [dot] com, editorial [at] singpao [dot] ca, tabtips [at] png [dot] canwest [dot] com, news [at] 24 [dot] ca, editor [at] firstnationsdrum [dot] com, globalbc [dot] newstips [at] globaltv [dot] ca, oldies [at] 650cisl [dot] com, radionews [at] vancouver [dot] cbc [dot] ca, indo [at] telus [dot] net, linknews [at] smartt [dot] com, icy [at] philippinejournal [dot] com, vannews [at] city [dot] com, gord [dot] kurenoff [at] metronews [dot] ca, vancouver [at] cp [dot] org, news [at] am1470 [dot] com, news [at] terminalcity [dot] ca] have to edit this…
Comments Off
Colin Miles at April 1 rally.
Filed under: Stuff to watch
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:29 am
Click this link to watch Colin Miles speaking at the April 1 rally in Vancouver.
Comments Off
Why is CBC advertizing SONY et al?
Filed under: Stuff to print
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:20 am
Click here to see the poster we used on April 1 in Vancouver
===
04/03/08
Wilmer Fawcett
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:38 pm
Hello Joyce, and congratulations on your recent election!
I’m writing to protest the actions of the CBC (and ultimately the PMO) in
disbanding the CBC Radio Orchestra and further the gutting of classical
music from Radio 2.
The CBC is OUR national voice, and its mandate is not governed by commercial
interests or the marketplace. It is the repository of Canadian art and
thought, in a way that an art gallery or museum is. Canadian composers,
musicians, performers depend on the CBC as their voice in a world
increasingly dominated by pop culture and middle-of-the-road “safe”
programming. The stimulation of art and thought by our own artists is very
rarely heard on the airwaves these days.
The restoration of new music sessions and composers workshops which the
Radio Orchestra used to do (in conjunction with the Canadian Music Centre)
are a goal worthy to be aimed at, let alone the restoration of the
orchestra. I think it was a huge mistake to cut these studio sessions, cut
the recording and CD catalogue, in favor of public concerts of standard
repertoire that every other orchestra plays. Those studio sessions and
recordings of new music was what the orchestra did best, and gave it a
reason to exist and flourish, since no one else was doing it. The orchestra
was the instrument by which our artists could be heard.
I wish to add my voice in protest to what is happening at the CBC,
supposedly OUR public radio network, supposedly free from the dictates of
commercial pressures and interests. It is the last bastion of ideas, thought
and the arts, which cannot be found on commercial radio. The CBC has been
dismantled over the years, and is now in recent weeks being cataclysmically
gutted, in a quasi-attempt to make it more like the other fare already
offered by commercial radio. The excising of the CBC Radio Orchestra is the
latest and most brutal cut. With a VERY small budget, this gem of an
orchestra has been since 1938 the means of introducing to Canadian (and
international) listeners our own music, our performers, our composers, as
well as musical rarities not given by the other orchestras. With the
silencing of this voice, the Conservatives have stomped on the wonderful
heritage of which thousands of us are justifiably proud.
Thank you for hearing us and supporting Canadian music lovers in this
worthwhile protest.
Yours truly, a Quadra resident,
Wilmer Fawcett
(played under John Avison, and became principal bass with John Eliot Gardner and Mario Bernardi,)
comments (0)
Headlines to 4/3/08
Filed under: Other internet resources, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:06 pm
Protesters demand CBC Radio Orchestra be saved
CBC.ca – Alberta, Canada
About 150 people rallied in Vancouver on Tuesday, protesting the decision
to stop funding the CBC Radio Orchestra. The decision to disband the
orchestra was …
See all stories on this topic:
Protesters demand CBC Radio Orchestra be saved
By admin
About 150 people rallied in Vancouver on Tuesday, protesting the decision to stop funding the CBC Radio Orchestra. The decision to disband the orchestra was made last week. The orchestra will cease to exist at the end of the fall …
Music Industry News
UBC school of music takes a stand against CBC Radio 2 butchering
By maayan kreitzman(Gerald)
CBC management, with the wisdom of it’s lobotomized-gerbil brain trust, decided last Thursday to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra, the last remaining radio orchestra in North America. This move follows closely on the heels of a major …
UBC Insiders
Estimates Vary
By info[at]bigsnit.com (BigSnit Media, Vancouver,…
Depending on who you believe, somewhere between 100 and 200 people gathered in Vancouver today to protest the axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra. According to Colin Miles who posted a comment here. On very short notice about 200 people …
BigSnit.com
CBC Axes Radio Orchestra – rec.music.classical.recordings | Google …
Mar 28, 2008 … VANCOUVER — The Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra –
the last … The CBC Radio Orchestra was founded by John Avison in 1938 and
has had …
Classical fans riled at CBC
Globe and Mail – Canada
“We demand that you rescind your decision and restore the CBC Radio
Orchestra to health,” Colin Miles, regional director of the Canadian Music
Centre, …
See all stories on this topic:
Save CBC Orchestra Facebook group
It was an extremely sad week for fans of this group as CBC execs announced, not only to continue gutting Radio Two’s content but now also to destroy the last Radio Orchestra left in North America – the CBC Radio Orchestra, …
Peer Magic
The Macbook lives!!!
By nbaeker(nbaeker)
After a successful debut, I was told by the harpist I was one of the best page turners she’s had… and upon realizing that she’s the Principal Harpist for the CBC Radio Orchestra, I would say she’s got some experience with which to say …
Hope Springs Eternal
Protesters March To Demand CBC Radio Orchestra Be Saved
By music-news
“The orchestra was formed in 1938 when radio orchestras were popular and is the last of its kind in North America. The decision to disband it was a matter of economics, Jennifer McGuire, executive director of CBC English Radio, …
Live On Music
Music Lovers Protest Death of CBC Radio Orchestra
Exclaim! – Toronto,Ontario,Canada
Following Monday’s announcement that the CBC Radio Orchestra would be
disbanding at the end of the fall concert season in November due to a lack
of funding, …
See all stories on this topic:
Next thing you know, they’ll be dropping their radio ventriloquist …
Los Angeles Times – CA,USA
I’m a fan of vestigial cultural survivals, but even I reacted to news of
the shutdown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Orchestra
with an …
See all stories on this topic:
Au Secours!
By MikeGoldstein
The CBC Radio Orchestra is about to enter into its 70th season, and to commemorate the milestone the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is pulling the band’s funding. Needless to say, the news hasn’t gone over well in Canada. …
Nimble Tread
Two articles
By BrahmsNotes(BrahmsNotes)
Adaptistration: “Flanagan, Shreveport, and The CBC Radio Orchestra” (4/1) It is interesting to note the critique in the above-mentioned Adaptistration article that the author asserts that some people are using bankruptcy as a marketing …
Proud Supporters of the Columbus…
CBC Radio Orchestra Poll Results
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
Do you agree with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s decision to dismantle the CBC Radio Orchestra? Vizu polls are designed so that they can be replicated (click on the Copy Poll link after you’ve voted and you can customize and …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
End of the CBC Radio Orchestra
By Classical Net
This time the argument is taking place on two fronts, one the decision to shuffle the programming on Radio 2 to reduce the emphasis on classical music, the other to kill off the CBC radio orchestra, the last radio orchestra in North …
Classical Net News
Colin Miles at the Save the CBC Radio Orchestra Rally in Vancouver
By Chris Foley(Chris Foley)
From the rally held Tuesday morning in Vancouver, here is footage of a speech by Colin Miles, BC Regional Director of the Canadian Music Centre, on the impact that the loss of the CBC Radio Orchestra will have on the musical life of …
The Collaborative Piano Blog
More Canadian brouhaha
By David Duff(David Duff)
A few days ago, it was announced that the CBC Radio Orchestra would be de-funded, and would be going out of business. This from cbcnews.ca: About 150 people rallied in Vancouver on Tuesday, protesting the decision to stop funding the …
David Duff’s Classical Blog
CBC National Day of Action
By Andrew W.(Andrew W.)
We’re going to have demonstrations at as many CBC installations as we possibly can to protest the changes to Radio Two and the axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra. Come visit the Facebook event site for more details …
The Transcontinental
Classical Music Is Getting A Bad Rep
By jodru(jodru)
Alain Trudel pens an ode to the CBC Radio Orchestra. People are protesting in the streets over its demise. * Pittsburgh Gazette offers a snapshot of the current opera crisis. JP Morgan Chase is in buyout discussions. …
ANABlog
Axing of CBC orchestra ignites protest
Georgia Straight – Vancouver,British Columbia,Canada
By Jessica Werb A national uproar has ensued from the news that the
Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra is to be dismantled, with protesters
lobbing …
See all stories on this topic:
comments (0)
Info from Heidi Krutzen and Ariel Barnes
Filed under: Who to contact, Open Letters
Posted by: morlock [at] 6:17 pm
Dear Colleagues,
Over the last week we have been out of town performing. While it has been difficult to be away while so much was going on with the CBC, we did manage to talk to several people, as well as to have a meeting with
concerned citizens on Salt Spring Island, and a spontaneous
fund-raising event last night at a Music on Main concert where we were
able to earn $850 toward our ad campaign. Several other audience
members said they would donate online. The following are ideas that
were presented in both discussions with the Salt Spring Island
community and with our fellow colleagues. Some of these initiatives
have already begun but I am including them to show that we are well
supported in these areas.
Best wishes,
Heidi Krutzen and Ariel Barnes
* contact Maude Barlow from the Council for Canadians www.canadians.org – this is a cause that they felt she would stand behind and she is apparently extraordinarily effective
* start a website (as has been done) that contains specific facts about what the CBC is doing so that letters that are sent to the government contain accurate facts
* start a petition (I forwarded it to the man acting as conduit for the islands today)
* it was felt that leaders of business, all symphonies, music teachers, and choral groups across the country be contacted and asked to make statements. Does anyone have access to this information?
* that this will be won in the political arena – the importance of writing to both the liberals and the conservatives (it may also be of note to contact people no longer in the political arena but who hold lots of clout – Lloyd Axworthy, Stephen Owen, and Stephen Lewis)
* to have the mayor of Vancouver Sam Sullivan give a statement. He is a supporter of the arts, as is his partner Lynn. All eyes will be on Vancouver in 2010, our culture and heritage being show cased at the same time as the Olympics. The CBC Radio Orchestra would be the natural fit to take center stage for this.
* place a full page ad in the Globe and Mail – where does the union sit on this? Are we able to use money from the strike fund to help fund this?
* Contact some of the artists that are featured on the CBC Globe and Mail ad to ask for their support. Surely Ron Sexsmith who has performed with the Radio Orchestra would have no desire to be featured in that ad. Fill half of our ad with supporters of the Radio Orchestra and CBC – prominent people from all sectors. e.g. Margaret Atwood, Karen Kain, Ben Heppner, Meesha Bruegggergosman, Richard Margison, Atom Egoyan, Evelyn Hart, Sir Andrew Davis, John Alleyne, Stephen Lewis, Lloyd Axworthy, Mario Bernardi, Peter Oundjian, Bramwell Tovey, Pinchas Zucherman, Diana Krall, Richard Margison, Gordon Campbell, Sarah McLachlan, Louis Lortie, Jane Siberry, KD Lang, Rufus Wainwright, Jon Kimura Parker, Emanuel Ax, Alanis Morissette, visual artists, prominent business people etc etc)
* That support needs to come nationally, from arts groups across the border as well as from US states that listen regularly to CBC – Michigan, Washington etc
* the censorship going on needs to be addressed by other media outlets
* have local reporters who write about music in our various papers – Georgia Straight, Vancouver Courier, Westender, Vancouver Sun etc – write articles and interview our local spokes people
Also of note, I believe the opera will release a statement soon about the
CBC Radio Orchestra announcement. I imagine the VSO will do the same thing.
Many of those in Salt Spring spoke so eloquently about their passion for
both the CBC Radio Orchestra and the CBC – about it’s place in our heritage, the value that it brings to us culturally and that it was the heart of the country. We encouraged them to write letters and hopefully
those will soon be posted on our websites.
We hope some of this may be helpful. Please pass this along to anyone who may not be on this immediate list.
Many thanks.
comments (0)
NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST APRIL 11
Filed under: •••General•••, PROTEST CALENDAR
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:50 pm
(reposted from the Facebook event)
*”Raise a Ruckus for Radio Two!” *
A National Day of Action to save Radio 2 and the CBC Orchestra
Friday, April 11, 2008, at the same time across the nation, i.e. different local time.
9:00am – 1:30pm
…moving from west to east so that we are protesting at the same time!!!
NB The protest does not last until 1:30. See times below for each city.
St. John’s, Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary,
Vancouver, and more!
After the wonderful success of the recent protest at CBC Vancouver to
protest the demise of the CBC Radio Orchestra, a protest in Montreal is
being organized by musicians and Radio Two fans in solidarity this
Friday. In order to give folks in other cities enough time to organize,
OUR NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION DEMONSTRATION WILL TAKE PLACE NEXT FRIDAY,
APRIL 11th
Can we expand this protest to every CBC
installation across the country. Do you dare to take a portion of your
lunch hour to travel to the CBC centre in YOUR community to call for an
end to the cutting of classical music programming and infrastructure?
Can we make it a simultaneous protest in every city, in every time zone
across Canada from Victoria to St. John’s?
If you are interested
in participating in a short but noisy and cross-Canada demonstration,
sign up to this event. If you would like to be a point-person for your
community and a contact for others, message me and I will add your
contact info to this page. It is necessary to capitalize on our
momentum and notoriety as quickly as possible and a week’s warning
should give us enough time to prepare and recruit.
Here are the addresses and times:
We
still really need people to take charge of Regina, Northern Ontario and
New Brunswick’s three big towns. Who’s it gonna be? We’ve got every
province but we need these cities too to have a truly national
character! Press release needs to come out soon so let’s fill these
slots up!
9am Pacific: Victoria: 1025 Pandora Avenue
Contact: Cecilia Porter – ceciliap[at]uvic.ca
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=14395138707
9am Pacific: Vancouver: 775 Cambie Street
Contacts: David Taylor Gill – dtg1[at]sfu.ca
Jocelyn Morlock – jocelynmorlock[at]yahoo.ca
John Oliver – joliver1[at]earsay.com
Michael Vincent – info[at]michaelvincent.ca
10am Mountain: Calgary: 1724 Westmount Blvd. NW
Contact – Andrew Nowry Andrewnowry[at]gmail.com
Darren Young – silentearth66[at]hotmail.com
10am Mountain: Edmonton: 23 Edmonton City Centre, 10062-102nd Avenue
Contacts – Scott Bursey – scottbursey[at]gmail.com
John Brough – jsbrough[at]shaw.ca
Peter McGillivray radio2[at]petermcgillivray.com
10am Sask: Saskatoon: CBC 144 2nd Ave South
Contacts: Karen Mak hop_rocks[at]hotmail.com
Lorraine McGrath Khachtourians
Brendan McLean – bjm384[at]mail.usask.ca
10am Sask: Regina: 2440 Broad Street
11am Central: Winnipeg: 541 Portage Avenue
Contact: Jonathan Klassen – jklasse[at]gmail.com
12pm Eastern: Toronto: 250 Front Street West
Contacts: James Baldwin jamesmichaelbaldwin[at]rogers.com
Chris Foley chris[at]collaborativepiano.com
Kathleen Rudolph Jkrudolph5[at]aol.com
Julia Mah – fairside61[at]hotmail.com
12pm Eastern: London, ON: 208 Piccadilly Street
Contact: Forrest Pass – fpass[at]uwo.ca
Durval Cesetti – durval.cesetti.cbcprotestlondon[at]gmail.com
12pm Eastern: Ottawa: 181 Queen Street, Ottawa – Meeting at Sparks Street entrance
Contact: James Wooten – cbcradiotwoandme[at]hotmail.com
Gary Hayes – cansona[at]rogers.com
12pm Eastern: Montreal: 1400 Rene Levesque East
Contact-Alexandra Fol – alexandra.fol[at]mail.mcgill.ca
Emily Gray – contra_alto[at]hotmail.com
Michael Shannon – michael.shannon[at]mail.mcgill.ca
1pm Atlantic: Saint John: 560 Main Street
1pm Atlantic: Halifax: 1601 South Park
Contact: Christian Stalley – cspstudio[at]yahoo.ca
Stephanie Moore – st886157[at]dal.ca
Janet Brush – thunderbug22003[at]yahoo.ca
1pm Atlantic: Charlottetown: 430 University Avenue
Contact Kate Huston – drummingdiva[at]hotmail.com
1:30pm Newfoundland: St John’s: 25 Henry Street
Contact: Heather Joyce – livingabundance[at]hotmail.com
Make
sure to also Copy and past the text of this event into an email and
forward it to as many people as you can. Let’s make sure we get this
movement off Facebook and into the general public as well. over 100
people showed up in Vancouver. If we can get even 20 to show up at each
CBC station we will have made a huge statement.
For inspiration check out the following group sites:
Save Classical Music at the CBC
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9009203294
Save the CBC Radio Orchestra
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10103441879
Vancouver composer, John Oliver’s Ad Campaign Site
http://standonguardforcbcradio.earsay.com/
La Scena Musicale’s list of web articles:
http://www.scena.org/columns/spotlight.asp?lan=2&flag=1&id=79
comments (0)
Alain Trudel’s April 1st letter
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:22 pm
April 1st, 2008
Dear members of my orchestra, colleagues, and music lovers across the country,
Over the past few days I have received your many communications concerning the untimely demise of the CBC Radio Orchestra (CRO). I want to thank you so much for your concern and love for the Orchestra. I am very moved to see how many people understand the importance of the CRO (celebrating it’s 70th anniversary this season) for Canadians of all musical backgrounds.
The musicians, and myself are, of course, devastated by the loss of our mandate from the CBC, which first gave us life. In this time of shock and obvious distress, I think it is important to articulate, as clearly as possible, the value that our Orchestra brings to music lovers from everywhere in our country and to the CBC itself. In order to move forward, we need to grasp what it stands for and its place in our cultural life.
At this moment the CRO is one of the top orchestras in the country; an orchestra, which we as Canadians have spent seven decades building. This Orchestra is a musical jewel and a cultural landmark.
Being the only Radio Orchestra in the Americas, the CRO is the ONE music ensemble that sets the Canadian music scene apart. By its existence, its mission and its work, it helps define Canada’s uniqueness.
Throughout it history the CRO has called upon composers and performers of all cultural backgrounds from across our country, proving that music is alive in our country, even when other matters may cause despair or discouragement.
Through live performance and national broadcast exposure the CRO gives exposure to Canadian soloists and composers, sending a message of hope to all young Canadian creators and to musicians of all musical backgrounds. It shows that their voices will be heard and celebrated.
Throughout my tenure, I have insisted that we develop projects from all musical genres, including jazz, world, pop and Canadian native music.
In 2007, we started the Great Canadian Song Book, which commissioned a diverse roster of composers to create “art song” settings of works from Joni Mitchell to Neil Young, from Buffy Ste-Marie to Serge Fiori and Michel Rivard.
The CRO has developed creative projects around music from Asia and the Middle-East; around jazz improvisers as well as traditional orchestral repertoire as well as collaborating with the rapper K-os.
During the last season, we commissioned 18 works over seven concerts. Through the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is not only seen as a programmer but also as an active partner in Canadian art-making.
The CRO, through the elegance of a national broadcasting network, has reached people across our country. In September 2007, we performed a specially developed program, live, in Iqaluit on Frobisher Bay. Months later, we went to White Rock, B.C. We have received invitations from large and small communities across Canada and even from major concert halls in Europe. All of this, alas, we are now unable to entertain.
I have been fortunate in my career to work extensively in both English and French Canada, having thereby, a truly national perspective. To my great joy, in recent months the French services of the Corporation have not only become more aware of the fine work of the CRO, but have expressed a desire to embrace it. This also is a path that we cannot now pursue. However, the role of the Orchestra in building bridges across our country is something we must never forget.
Many things have been made clear in the work of the Orchestra and in your response to its closing: the importance of music in our lives, the importance of nurturing, supporting and broadcasting the diversified and astonishing talent we have in our country, the role of a national broadcaster in bringing us together, and much more. We will each have our personal reflection on the meaning of all of this, but one thing is certain: the CRO reminds us of what it is we cherish most in music and in our country.
Respectfully yours,
Alain Trudel
Principal Conductor, CBC radio Orchestra
2 comments
2 Responses to “Alain Trudel’s April 1st letter”
1. Elizabeth S. Sims Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 1:01 pm I totally support your petition! How can I not? Dominique (can’t remember her new married name – she plays in both the CBC Radio Orchestra and our Okanagan Symphony Orchestra – at least those two!) made an impassioned plea for we audience members to “sign the petition” to cancel the cancellation of the Radio Orchestra. As a very young child in England (late 1940s) I listened to classical music on the BBC’s Third Program. It must have been the seed of my ‘audience only’ love of hearing such music on the radio. Bon chance! Elizabeth S. Sims
2. David Bowles Says:
April 24th, 2008 at 12:34 am How many countries have an orchestra dedicated to radio broadcast and touring, and a standard of excellence such as the CRO? It is shocking that an ensemble of this quality would be disbanded, given its history of excellence since its inception! I strongly suggest that the CBC reconsider its position on this matter…
About the host
Filed under: About the Blog
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:46 am
John Oliver is a composer, performer, and writer based in Vancouver. You can learn about his work here:
http://www.johnolivermusic.com/
He is co-Artistic Director of earsay productions, a small boutique CD label that specialized in electroacoustic and new music. His label has donated the web space for this blog.
comments (0)
David Litke
Filed under: Students Speak Up
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:16 am
FIRST NAME: David
LAST NAME: Litke
OCCUPATION: DMA Student
RELATIONSHIP TO CBC RADIO ORCHESTRA: I listen to them on the radio
RELATIONSHIP TO CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION: I listen to CBC radio
WHY YOU WANT TO JOIN in approximately 100 words (or less): I am an emerging composer, and since this institution has been a major supporter of Canadian music, I would like to see it survive.
04/05/08
Article by Marsha Lederman from the Globe and Mail, April 5/08
Filed under: •••General•••, Other internet resources
Posted by: morlock [at] 1:22 pm
http://tinyurl.com/69uluw
Great article – here is an excerpt that was sent to me by Heather Pawsey:
Sellars, on the night of his talk,
urged the audience not to be intimidated by the challenge at hand.
“Not the cynical shrug of the shoulders and‘What can anyone do?’
Not the futility of
‘Oh my God, the problem is so immense,
it’s a disaster.
Let’s just go have dinner.’
We need to get ourselves in another mode,
which is why the arts were invented:
to show you the single human being is overwhelmingly powerful.
And when a single human being figures out they’re part of a community,
it is unstoppable.”
===
04/07/08
Listener Phyllis Reeve
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:50 pm
to: Hon Josee Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage
Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper
cc. Hon. Stephane Dion
Jean Crowder M.P.
We are distressed by the accelerating dismantling of the CBC, especially of
Radio Two, and of the repudiation of its longstanding mandate of excellence.
Over the past months there has been a radical reduction in programming of
classical and serious contemporary music, exemplified by the cancellation
of such superior programs as Sound Advice. Remaining programs contain more
and more talk, commentary and interviewing – and less and less actual
music.
Earlier this year the CBC announced the end to the production of recordings
of classical music.
Most recently, the CBC Radio Orchestra has been terminated.
Programming and funding priorities are obviously in disarray.
It is true that I am a “Senior”, but I find no evidence among the young
people of my acquaintance that they are any less capable of appreciating
quality than their grandparents were. The CBC has always been a major
conduit for introducing listeners to the Best. We can find the Mediocre
elsewhere.
Please give us back our CBC.
Sincerely
Phyllis Reeve
Gabriola BC
comments (0)
Curtain call for CBC Orchestra
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:36 pm
Facebook members Alexandra Fol and John Oliver quoted.
Matthew Coutts, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Alexandra Fol, a Bulgarian-born composer who moved to Montreal four years ago to complete a doctorate in music at McGill University, says she has been betrayed by her adopted homeland.
A factor in her decision to become a permanent citizen was the CBC’s Radio Orchestra, the last public orchestra of its kind in North America.
But the announcement of its closure after 70 years of operation has angered Ms. Fol and provoked a storm of protest.
“I am very serious about protecting the culture of the country I chose to adopt. You arrive in one country and you know it stands for something. It is known all over the world to stand for something,” she said Monday of Canada’s commitment to public radio.
When the radio orchestra stops performing in November — so the less than $1-million budget can be used to acquire works from other Canadian orchestras — it will cease to produce and promote Canadian composers, performers and conductors.
The decision to end the run of the Vancouver-based orchestra has not gone over well with Canada’s music world, many of whom described the announcement as the latest attack on artistic music.
In less than 72 hours, more than 3,000 people joined a Facebook group — Save Classical Music At The CBC — demanding the orchestra’s return. As of Tuesday morning, the group totalled 10,624 members.
The group has also embarked on a letter-writing campaign, targeting Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Heritage Minister Josee Verner and nearly every level of the CBC decision-makers.
E-mails opposing the “incredible short-sightedness and disrespect to the Canadian cultural values” have been sent by fans, performers, students, and such musical elites as Boris Brott, the principal conductor of the CBC Winnipeg Orchestra until it was closed in 1984.
“The decision to dismantle the Radio Orchestra was, as we say in Bulgaria, the last drop that made the glass of water overflow,” Fol said.
The CBC defended its position Monday, saying it was a purely budgetary decision and one they knew wasn’t going to be popular.
“The news wasn’t taken very well, and we didn’t expect it to be. It was a difficult decision to make,” CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said.
“At the same time … we have an obligation to reflect the musical diversity of the country. Classical, yes. But also other kinds of music.
“The infrastructure costs associated with the orchestra, we could use those resources more efficiently to, at the end of the day, get more music on the air to our audiences,” Keay said, adding the money will now go to buy music from other organizations, including private orchestras.
John Oliver, a Vancouver-based composer who has had two pieces co-commissioned by the Radio Orchestra, says the CBC is trying to spin the announcement by saying the money will be better spent commissioning composers for other orchestras.
“Those orchestras have not spent 70 years specializing in the performance of Canadian music. It’s not a bonus for us,” he said.
“These are highly important cornerstones to the cultural musical life of Vancouver and of the country. That orchestra and the capacity for the CBC to record them very easily allows Canadian music and Canadian performers to be heard easily across public airwaves throughout the nation.”
comments (0)
LEARN & READ
Filed under: •••LEARN•••
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:22 pm
Here is where you can read articles about the issues and interviews with the players. Links to informative web sites can also be found here if they are not to be found in the “Internet Resources” category.
comments (0)
PROTEST HERE
Filed under: •••PROTEST•••
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:18 pm
PROTEST HERE.
Read what others have written. Write your own letters. Download materials.
comments (0)
Peter Sellars on arts activism
Filed under: Words about activism
Posted by: site admin [at] 6:33 pm
Thanks to Heather Pawsey for this.
Excerpted from a story in today’s [April 5] Globe and Mail by Marsha Lederman about Calgary’s potential as a
hub for cultural excellence in the West: opera director Peter Sellars addressing the audience at a
seminar hosted by the Alberta College of Art and Design:
Sellars, on the night of his talk, urged the audience not to be intimidated by the challenge at hand.
“Not the cynical shrug of the shoulders and ‘What can anyone do?’ Not the futility of ‘Oh my God, the
problem is so immense, it’s a disaster. Let’s just go have dinner.’ We need to get ourselves in another
mode, which is why the arts were invented: to show you the single human being is overwhelmingly
powerful. And when a single human being figures out they’re part of a community, it is unstoppable.”
comments (0)
Sara Beuncher on culture and race.
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:53 pm
In reference to this piece by John Terauds in April 6, Toronto Star, Sara D. Beuchner, says
Seattle, Washington USA
6 April 2008
Dear Mr. Teraud:
I’m taking a little time off from my busy schedule of travelling around the world and playing apparently irrelevant music for audiences which ironically seem to be made of living and breathing human beings, many of whom are even under the age of 30 — to address your article in today’s Toronto Star (”CBC Radio 2 devotees face classic conundrum”); although your sidebar (”Canon Fodder”) particularly grabbed my attention this morning.
The idea of “treating classical music with reverence” seems a sound one to me, not some antiquated practice that needs re-defining for Generation Z. Reverence goes hand in hand with respect, focus and attention — that’s how I listen to great music, how I look at great artwork, how I watch wonderful movies, and how I read a good book. It’s also how all great musicians approach their own meticulous and difficult work and why they appreciate getting it in return.
I didn’t realize that Toronto was such a backwater that there you need to find “new ways of creating unique statements of the individual.” I seem to see that going on in most major concert halls of the world, including Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle, not to mention New York, Prague and Tokyo. Last night my Seattle audience enjoyed an evening of Mozart, Ibert, Poulenc, Kouji Taku and Yoshinao Nakada, responding with applause, laughter, cheers and encore calls. I see great classical musicians young and old all over the world doing the same, invigorating our current generation with lots of interest and appreciation for diversity and excellence in the concert hall. In Canada most such musicians love to play with the CBC Radio Orchestra because their own programming is so relevant, imaginative, urgent and even non-”Euro-centric.” Also because the orchestra is on a par with the finest in the world. If you don’t get their kind of program in Toronto you may want to tune in for the CBC Radio Orchestra’s next concert — before you can’t any more.
Lastly, I’d like to add that your closing comment insinuating that Toronto’s visible minorites are in need of less Euro-centric music strikes me as racist and naive. I don’t know who appointed you spokesperson for those minorities, but my own experience living in the Bronx of America and performing on five continents has taught me that people of all races, creeds, colour and gender deserve the right to hear, see and experience greatness. When I have played great classical piano music by, say, Mozart, Chopin, Yukiko Nishimura (living female Japanese), Philippa Schuyler (dead black female American) or Einojuhani Rautavaara (white living Finn) — for Black and Hispanic audiences in the Bronx, or Slavic audiences in Prague, or Japanese audiences in Osaka, they enjoyed all of it provided it was performed with zest and involvement — in a word, reverence.
The CBC Radio Orchestra has served the Canadian public with imagination and reverence for 70 years. Obviously the executives who made the decision to de-fund the CRO do not understand or appreciate its greatness, nor do they respect the intelligence and imagination of the diverse Canadian public that loves the CRO. You seem to be content to support that decision, an odd position for a newspaper critic whose duty is to serve his public. Your ill-informed comments also show clearly that you do not attend many concerts of any kind, or keep up with the latest developments in the exciting world of classical music.
Sara Davis Buechner
Assistant Professor of Piano,
University of British Columbia
Vancouver B.C. Canada
FOLLOWUP
Hi Sara,
Thank you for the letter.
We disagree on several points, but the most important one is your assumption that the current changes at the CBC are somehow an all-or-nothing situation for classical music.
Nothing could be further from the truth — for the CBC, or for me personally.
The world is not black and white — anytime, anywhere.
All the best in your work.
John
Seattle, Washington USA
6 April 2008
Dear John:
Thanks for your response. You are right, the decisions by the CBC are not all-or-nothing for Canadian music. They are all-or-nothing for an orchestra of the finest musicians in Canada. I’d be upset if the New York Philharmonic was disbanded, I’d be upset if the New Japan Philharmonic of Tokyo was disbanded, and I am upset that the CRO is being disbanded. Nowhere have you ever even attempted to explain how destroying a top-quality group is good for music in general, or Canada in particular.
Sara Davis Buechner
1 comment
Barbara Sosa Says:
April 7th, 2008 at 9:23 pm I am part of a visible minority and I consider an insult to be used in such a way. In the first place who is reading our mind in such a way? I love classical music! and not only myself but my children who cannot believe that someone would desmantle the Orchestra! Classical music inspires and elevates the spirit! If the world destroys what is beautiful and worthy of admiration what message are our children receiving? And I just couldn’t think of how that time on the air is going to be filled! Nothing could stand to the height!
Facebook group in favour of Radio 2 changes
Filed under: •••General•••, Other internet resources
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:41 pm
Justin Beach of publicbroadcasting.ca has started a Facebook group in favour of the changes at Radio 2. He seems to accept the notion that this is a battle between “classical music” and other music genres, rather than a struggle for cultural sovereignty. As Facebook is a club, you must join to see what he’s saying. Facebook.com.
4 comments
4 Responses to “Facebook group in favour of Radio 2 changes”
1. EmilyG Says:
April 7th, 2008 at 10:27 pm I couldn’t find this group, Could you provide a link to it?
2. site admin Says:
April 7th, 2008 at 11:30 pm http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10781634634
3. Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip Says:
April 8th, 2008 at 11:35 pm Really, John: “He seems to accept the notion that this is a battle between “classical music” and other music genres, rather than a struggle for cultural sovereignty.” I fully respect the points you’re making, but this is really treading very close to willful misinformation. Isn’t it good enough to allow people to make up their own minds — or, at the very least, to quote directly from Beach’s own words rather than put your own in his mouth? This is a very important issue which many people are very upset about, but I don’t think anyone’s served by this sort of thing. Ben
4. site admin Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm Hi Ben, I am informing people about the existence of a group that stands in opposition to ours, but I am providing my opinion when I say “He seems to accept…”, not (mis)informing. It’s my opinion, not information. Since it’s my opinion or interpretation, I do not attribute my opinion to him. I encourage debate and understanding, that’s for sure. My point is that I personally do not accept the notion that those opposed to the shut down of CBC Radio Orchestra are “classical music lovers” only, that they are an exclusive, rich elite. A great number of those opposed to the changes at Radio 2 are lovers of a broad range of culture.
James Wooten blog 2007-08
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:17 pm
Hi,
I just found your blog (via the Facbook group protesting the recent changes to CBC Radio Two programming) and I applaud your initiative.
I, too, have been protesting the changes to the CBC Radio Two programming, beginning with the March 19 2007 programming changes which removed “Music for Awhile” and “In Performance” from the evening programming.
You can read the letter that I sent to Mr. Robert Rabinovitch to protest these changes here:
http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-letter-to-mr-robert-rabinovitch.html
and the letters that I sent to Ms. Jane Chalmers and Ms. Jennifer McGuire here:
http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2007/05/moving-up-cbc-radio-hierarchy.html
and the letter I sent to the Minister of Heritage, Ms. Bev Oda here:
http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2007/05/letter-to-hon-bev-oda-minister-of.html
and the letters that I sent to the members of the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (who are supposed to oversee the actions of CBC management) here:
http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2007/05/house-standing-committee-on-canadian.html
Also posted on my blog are replies from Ms. Jennifer McGuire, Ms. Bev Oda and Mr. Gary Schellenberger, the Chair (at the time) of the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
I’d appreciate it if you could include a link to my blog on your site, to publicize the responses (or lack thereof) that I received to these letters.
Ms. Jennifer McGuire’s response can be found here:
http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2007/06/reply-from-ms-jennifer-mcguire.html
and my subsequent reply to her response is here:
http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2007/06/reply-to-ms-jennifer-mcguires-letter-of.html
I plan to attend the National Day of Action protest in Ottawa on April 11. I believe we can effect a change in CBC Radio Two if we all act together!
James
comments (0)
Business-like arts a failure
Filed under: Other internet resources, Words about activism
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:12 pm
This article from Australia shows how filling the boards of arts organization with businessmen has been a failure.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/04/02/1206851005398.html
comments (0)
David Brown, Principal Bass, CRO
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:28 am
This website hosted by composer John Oliver here in Vancouver http://standonguardforcbcradio.earsay.com is probably the best site to visit regularly for up to date news and a concerted plan of action in opposing the programming changes at CBC Radio Two and the termination of the CBC Radio Orchestra. There are many letters by major Canadian artists relaying how important CBC Radio Two has been in their musical development, first inspiring them in early childhood and then later providing invaluable performance opportunities for them in their professional endeavours.
The Organization of Canadian Symphonic Musicians (OCSM), representing 1100 Canadian professional musicians across Canada, has written a letter to Steinmetz and McGuire registering strong opposition to these actions. All of the OCSM orchestras and their conductors,boards and management are working very hard to increase educational outreach to children and students. These cuts by the CBC will seriously undermine our efforts in this regard. It is particularly ironic that the cuts come at a time when all recent research confirms the extraordinary benefits that musical training provides for children. Many children, whose parents either have no background with this art form or are unable to afford tickets to live concerts, can hear orchestral music at home and in their classrooms via CBC Radio Two. Commercial radio is certainly not going to fill this void so then how are young people even going to know that this music exists without the benefit of a national broadcaster committed to fulfilling its mandate to enrich and inspire future generations of Canadians?
David Brown Principal Bass CBC Radio Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, Turning Point Ensemble
comments (0)
Keep copies of your posts to CBC forums
Filed under: •••General•••
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:26 am
VERY IMPORTANT
If you post to comment to a CBC forum, please keep a copy of your comment on your own computer since CBC moderates comments and may censor yours. Also, they close comments after 6 days. If your comment is not posted on the CBC site, contact the admin of this blog to have your comment considered for posting. (Do that by clicking on the name “admin” where you see “Posted by: site admin”). Bloggers most always moderate their content. However our only goal in moderating this blog is to keep it focussed.
===
04/08/08
LINKS to Radio Interviews (with commentary)
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:50 pm
Canadian composer, John Oliver, and Canadian Music Centre Communications director Steven Foster speak on CFRO, Vancouver Co-operative radio with host Charles Boylan on Friday April 4, about the closing down of the CBC Radio Orchestra.
http://www.virishi.net/cfro/mp3/t1207323205.mp3
Colin Miles of the Canadian Music Centre on CBC’s THE CURRENT
[Comment from composer Marci Rabe on The Current segment, especially on the conversation that occured after Colin Miles spoke.]
As a composer, I was very disappointed with the conversation that followed what Colin said. It seemed that the mentions of classical music and composers were steeped in the past. Where were the references about composers who are alive today… and the incredible creative work that is most definitively relevant and being created, here and now.
There were a couple of remarks about contemporary classical music, and that it “…should be stressed more here”… however, this is not, in my estimation, where the emphasis of the conversation was. Almost immediately after this was said, the question was posed to the effect of ‘why is it that we should be putting more cultural subsidies into music of dead white men’?…
Well, really there is a need to be putting more into the music of living Canadian composers.
There was a comment about conservative programming… and fusing classical music with other genres and disciplines… no mention however that of course this is being done, and has been taking place for quite some time now (although underfunded). Where is the infrastructure for this work, this creativity that many youth do find engaging. Proof found in composer in the classroom experiences (of which we need more).
The “references” to the very real and relevant contemporary classical music and the creators of this music and art form were allusive. Near invisible.
I feel like these pertinent points were lost in a homogenous definition of “classical” music.
Marci Rabe
Composer
* enclosure: http://www.virishi.net/cfro/mp3/t1207323205.mp3 14400052 audio/mpeg
1 comment
One Response to “LINKS to Radio Interviews (with commentary)”
1. EmilyG Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 9:16 am There was also a radio interview on The Current today about classical music and the Radio 2 situation. A link to it may become available later, and if it does, I’ll post it.
Jill Wade – rabid folkie & classicist
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:15 pm
“I happen to enjoy and support a varied range of music from rock to light jazz to singer-songwriting to folk to classical, much of it Canadian in content. I am as rabid a folkie as a classicist! I can listen to all of that music with the exception of classical music on radio stations other than the CBC. No other station out here plays classical music.
“As a teacher of university-level Canadian and British Columbia history, and a Canadian art and architectural historian to boot, I endeavour to convince my students that Canada has its own unique culture. The Canadian culture flourishing out here on the West Coast has been shaped by core institutions as venerable as the CBC Radio Orchestra – the University of British Columbia, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Vancouver School of Art, and the CBC itself, all dating from the 1930s or earlier – and the people who have built them, now almost all gone – John Avison, Jean Coulthard, the Adaskins, the Shadbolts, B.C. Binning, Fred Lasserre, Margaret Ormsby, Bob Kerr, and Dorothy Somerset, all just as important to me in my everyday life as, in their own way, Tom Allen, Eric Friesen (heck, I started listening to him on the Altona radio station when I was growing up in St. Boniface, Manitoba), Howard Dyck, and Peter Togni are today. You disrespect and weaken not only all those institutions and individuals but also Canadian culture by killing the CBC Radio Orchestra. Deep-sixing the CBC Radio Orchestra is tantamount to closing down the Vancouver Symphony, something that almost happened a few years ago!
Jill Wade,
Vancouver, BC
comments (0)
Political Support links
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:12 pm
This message contains links to articles or press releases written in support of our cause.
NDP CULTURE CRITIC SPEAKS OUT
http://www.ndp.ca/page/6316
comments (0)
Ledroit, Baric et al on shutting down the competitions
Filed under: Open Letters, Students Speak Up
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:03 pm
The 2004 CBC National Young Composers’ Competition (I was 29) was the first to be axed. That was my last last year of eligibility. The 2002 competition was the last one held. I remember being particularly pissed off because I had my strongest entries ever for that year, and was really looking forward to it.
Christian Ledroit, composer
We have that in common. I still have the addressed manila envelope here in my office ready to be mailed. It was all set to go out when the news came down that there was no competition for 2004 (also my last year of eligibility).
Steven Baric
[Editor’s note: Larry Lake, host of the now discontinued program “Two New Hours” has verified that the finals of the last composers’ and performers’ competitions took place in 2003. Here is his remark:
The last CBC National Competition for Young Composers was in 2003. The
finals were in Montreal in March as part of the MusiMars festival. Analia
Lludgar was the grand prize winner. I hosted the live broadcast. Kelly-Marie
Murphy was my cohost.
The last CBC National Competition for Young Performers was held in Calgary
later that same year. I attended the finals to present the Karen Kieser
prizes for best performances of Canadian works. Baritone Peter McGillivray
won both the grand prize and the Kieser Prize.
Larry Lake]
comments (0)
CLC response to Steinmetz
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 8:47 am
Canadian League of Composers (CLC) response to Mark Steinmetz implying that the CLC support Radio 2 changes.
The Globe and Mail
Re:CBC Radio 2 devotees face classic
conundrum
Entertainment, April 6
The
Canadian League of Composers was misrepresented in John Terauds’
article. The position of our organization, which was not contacted for
the article, is that the cumulative changes to CBC Radio 2 are not a
success.
Programming that presents more of the kinds of music
found elsewhere does not lead to greater musical diversity. Canada’s
composers and classically trained performers, who come from all
cultural backgrounds, are losing a fundamental and national space for
the exchange and presentation of new ideas.
Brian Current, National Council,
Canadian League of Composers, Toronto
comments (0)
Clark Ross, composer
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 8:41 am
To Letters, The Globe and Mail, March 30, 2008
RE: CBC Scraps Radio Orchestra by Marsha Lederman (Globe and Mail Update, March 27, 2008)
The recent announcement of the planned demise of the CBC Vancouver Orchestra comes shortly after the news that CBC Radio 2 will be playing considerably less classical music in the fall, but, according to the CBC spokesperson quoted in the article, the two are not related. Perhaps they are also unrelated to the recent closing of the classical division at CBC Records, the demise of the CBC Young Composers Competition, and the last round of classical music cuts/show cancellations at CBC Radio 2 that took place a year ago, but these events are clearly part of a disturbing shift in programming philosophy at the national broadcaster that many see as an all-out attack on classical music.
If the planned termination of the CBC Orchestra goes ahead, not only will Canada be losing one of its best orchestras, but Canadian composers will be losing a significant opportunity to be heard; a significant part of the orchestra’s mandate is to commission and perform Canadian works, and this resulted in the commissioning of 18 new works for the orchestra last year. In reducing the airtime allotted to classical music, Canadian composers stand to lose hundreds of opportunities to have their music heard by radio audiences. In eliminating the Young Composers Competition, emerging compositional talents lost a hugely-prestigious opportunity to be discovered by a larger audience.
Classical music is a living and contemporary art form, and amongst Canada’s many hundreds of active composers are some of the best in the world. The CBC has historically played a tremendous and positive role in nurturing young compositional talent and bringing Canadian composers to public attention. It is becoming painfully clear that CBC management is abandoning this role, in direct contravention of their legislated mandate to reflect and promote Canadian culture. On behalf of the millions of Canadians who cherish living, vibrant classical music, I would ask the CBC, its Board, and the Department of Canadian Heritage to which it reports, to reinstate the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, and to restore meaningful classical music programming to our national broadcaster.
Dr. Clark Ross
Secretary, Canadian League of Composers
comments (0)
DONATION PAGE FIXED
Filed under: •••General•••
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:31 am
Dear readers,
There was a glitch on our DONATION PAGE over this past weekend which had the effect of sending donors to the Paypal main page. This is now fixed and you can donate easily again!
Sorry for the inconvenience. Please tell your friends the good news!
Admin.x
Comments Off
Karen Suzanne Smithson
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:02 am
Letter to Hubert Lacroix and other top CBC personnel:
April 4, 2008,
I wish to add my voice to the thousands who are calling for a reversal of the dismaying decision to shut down the operations of the CBC Radio Orchestra in November 2008.
For several days since I heard the news I have been trying, without success, to fathom how it is that those in charge of allocating funds to and within our public institutions could have made such a disastrous miscalculation in terms of the value that a large number of citizens place on great art. Perhaps it is because we in the community of those who enjoy classical music, both performers and listeners, are generally a quiet and peaceful group with souls nurtured by the art in which we participate. Carrying placards and screaming slogans are not ordinarily a part of our lives and perhaps we slip unnoticed under the radar of corporate scrutiny.
I came to the hopeful conclusion that perhaps the decision of the CBC to decomission its flagship was nothing more, in fact, than running a banner up the mast to see who would salute. Well, we are saluting in the thousands and want this decision revoked.
What you perhaps do not realize is that the CBC has historically provided, in large part through its Radio Orchestra, access for all Canadians to the best of human culture. We have enough of the worst and the collosal waste of money that it devours. Invest in the world’s best. It is right here in Canada and you are presiding over its fate. Make the right decision. Keep the CBC Radio Orchestra.
Sincerely,
Karen Suzanne Smithson
comments (0)
Lesley Miller + Jeff Keay response
Filed under: Open Letters, Students Speak Up
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:40 am
Jeff Keay
Head of Media Relations
English Services
CBC/Radio-Canada
416 205 3987
jeff.keay[at]cbc.ca
I am currently a 2nd year student in the Bachelor of Music Transfer program at Capilano College in
North Vancouver, BC, Canada. I am a vocal major/guitar minor.
I plan to transfer into the Music Therapy program at Capilano College this upcoming September
2008.
When I heard that the CBC Radio Orchestra was being disbanded without a public forum I was
devastated! This news made my heart sink. There is not another radio orchestra in Canada other
than the CBC Radio Orchestra that is as influential, moving or that gives full-time employment to up
and coming classical musicians.
If you think that the disbanding of this orchestra will not affect Classical Music students graduating
from our universities and colleges, you are sadly mistaken.
This orchestra influences young students, music educators, and other up-and-coming classical
musicians in BC and across Canada.
I wanted to make MY voice heard and I wish for there to be a public forum to let Canadian classical
music lovers’ voices be heard!
Mark Starowicz not showing up when he was a pre-booked guest on the BC Almanac open line on
Monday shows a lack of foresight, and professionalism.
Moves like that one, and the lack of a public forum quite frankly helps takes the “class” out of
Classical Music in Canada.
Sincerely,
Lesley Miller
—–Original Message—–
From: Jeff Keay [mailto:Jeff.Keay[at]CBC.CA]
Sent: April 4, 2008 1:05 PM
To: Lesley Miller
Subject: Re: CBC Radio Orchestra
Hi Lesley:
Thank you for taking the time to write. As you can imagine, we’ve received quite a few letters like
yours since last week, when we told the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver that we’d be unable to
continue beyond the end of the season this November.
I can assure you that this was a difficult decision and we took no joy from having to make it.
I hope you’ll allow me to clarify a few points. First, while this is most certainly an economic decision
(and no reflection on the quality of the orchestra, which has been consistently brilliant), it is not a
cost-cutting exercise. Rather, we determined that we can take the money we spend to support the
orchestra and use it to pursue musical initiatives with other organizations in Vancouver and
elsewhere in the country.
In this way, we will be able to bring significantly more music to Radio 2 audiences overall. And
classical music will remain the predominant genre on CBC Radio 2. There will be no reduction in the
resources we put towards creating high quality Canadian music.
Unfortunately, we have limited resources. This has always been the case with the CBC. It means we
sometimes need to make very difficult choices in order to put those resources to best use. This is
one of those examples. (I should also point out that the orchestra did not represent full-time
positions for its members.)
One last point. I have been in touch with Mark Starowicz’s office, which has confirmed that Mark was
never scheduled for the appearance you mention. I understand he’s in Europe and not available to do
any interviews.
In conclusion, I want to leave you with the assurance that Radio 2 will continue to be a service that
offers the very best of Canadian music- – most certainly classical music– from throughout the
country and for all of our listeners. Our mandate is to represent the musical and creative diversity of
the country to our listeners. No one else
does this. We’re proud to.
Please accept my best wishes for your continuing success with your own musical career.
Best regards,
_____________________________
Jeff Keay
Head of Media Relations
English Services
CBC/Radio-Canada
416 205 3987
jeff.keay[at]cbc.ca
comments (0)
Links to published letters
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:21 am
GEORGE ZUKERMAN in The Vancouver Sun on April 7.
comments (0)
Links to Radio Orchestras Worldwide
Filed under: Other internet resources
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:20 am
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2D81338F93BA25752C0A961948260
comments (0)
===
04/09/08
Working mom Hodie Kahn
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 6:55 pm
April 9, 2008
Dear Messrs Casgrin, Lacroix, Steinmetz and Ms. McGuire,
I am writing to protest the Canadian Broacasting Corporation’s cutbacks, most notably the axing of the Radio Orchestra and the severe cuts to the classical music programming on Radio 2.
As a taxpayer, I find your decision untenable. As a busy working mother, I find it pathetic. It is hard enough to find moments of respite from today’s hectic pace of life, let alone to fill them with the timeless beauty of the art of classical music. How fortunate, then, have I been to find a little oasis of classical sounds each day on Radio 2, sounds which begin with my early morning carpool to school and continue throughout my long days of mommy/wife/working gal tasks.
You have done a disservice not only to we, Canadians who were nurtured on and tutored in classical music as youngsters, but to the next and coming generations of citizens. What value can there possibly be — other than a perverted sense of economics and personal agendas — to scaling back on the classics in favour of the mediocrity (and less) of today’s so-called “pop stars?” There are so many broadcast outlets available to “showcase” their “talents,” why the need to do so at the expense of the classics?
Since you have taken it upon yourself to cutback on classical music to make way for contemporary “artists,” why stop with Radio 2? There are so many institutions you can influence. Perhaps you should confer with the heads of the Candian Council for the Arts, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and similar governing institutions about scaling back on their own exhibitions of classical art and historical exhibitions which have stood the test of time in favour of more latter day “artists” whose visions are more in sync with yours and of a more ephemeral nature?
I urge you to reconsider your mandate. Your decision need not be irreversible. The reprecussions of it will be.
Sincerely,
Hodie Kahn
Vancouver, BC
comments (0)
American critic/composer Kyle Gann on Canadian composers
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 6:20 pm
This article by Kyle Gann has some interesting comments by some young Canadian composers at the end.
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2008/04/the_maple_leaves_are_always_gr.html#comments
comments (0)
Robert Sunter
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 5:22 pm
Many years ago I was head of radio music when it was not only predominantly “classical” music but very active in producing and co-producing such music but also active throughout this country in promoting it.
The slide downhill from those days has accelerated in the past few months because there is now a head of music, Mark Steinmetz who regards classical music as just a small part of the whole music spectrum he feels he should be presenting. He works under an executive director of radio, Jennifer McGuire, who has risen to this position on the journalistic ladder and knows nothing about classical music.
Radio used to have a national vice-president of radio who had total charge of radio’s budget and schedule. Now the executive director answers to Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of television. who controls radio’s budget and schedule.
Obviously, radio’s status within the CBC has been severely downgraded. This is peculiar because, until recently, radio did a far better job than CBC Television does in meeting the corporation’s mandate.
An interesting sidebar to all this is that Mr. Steinmetz justifies his purpose in downgrading classical music is in order to find room on the schedule for the hundreds (or was it thousands) of Canadian pop songs which private broadcasters ignore.
I guess it is just a co-incidence that Mr. Steinmetz’s father Peter Steinmetz is chairman of the Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and has a lot to do with advancing the cause of Canadian song writers.
Yours cordially.
Robert Sunter, Administrator, critic,
Ontario Arts Council Music Officer, 1968-1976
Head of Radio Music, CBC English Service, 1976-1982
Director of CBC Radio 1987-1990
Program Director, CBC Stereo (now Radio2), 1991-
comments (0)
LINKS TO NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 5:21 pm
Victoria Times Colonist, April 9 – Sarah Petrescu
Georgia Straight analysis on April by Jessica Werb
comments (0)
How to help
Filed under: How to help
Posted by: site admin [at] 5:02 pm
Here’s are some things you can do to support the cause:
• Send in a request to have a recording of the CBC Radio orchestra played on the CBC Music request show Here’s to You (while it’s still on the air!)
• Comment on a story you read online or in a newspaper
• SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION (but write a letter too!)
• VOTE NOW to save the CBC Radio Orchestra:
• Buy recordings of the CBC Radio orchestra and other CD’s (still for now) available from CBC Records (e.g. the VSO recording with James Ehnes on the CBC Record label that just won a Juno adding to the Grammy it won in February!
• Make a donation to the national ad campaign (flyer for friday rally being created now).
comments (0)
Eric Ricker to John Doyle
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 8:20 am
— Original Message —–
From: Eric Ricker
To: jdoyle[at]globeandmail.com
Cc: Ian Morrison
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 2:40 PM
Subject: classical music fans should “get over yourselves” — your col. of April 7
John,
You have a strange way of alienating a substantial group who are likely with you on the other front you are championing, namely artistic freedom.
I don’t know if you listen to Radio 2, but this isn’t simply about classical vs. other forms of music. I realize the corporation is trying to frame it that way with its new ad campaign. But anyone who listens to CBC over time knows that a variety of music has always been there — even completely ghastly stuff in that “Brave New Waves” all-night show that ran for years.
What this is about is:
1. dumping into obscurity or realigning to small audience hours damn good broadcasters with fine programmes (e.g., the lustrous Danielle Charbonneau);
2. non-ending gushy announcements to visit a website and tune in to new programmes that aren’t cutting it;
3. mediocrity turning up in prime time — regrettably, “Canada Live” is the prime example, night after night;
4. ego-tripping with Gregory Charles on Sunday mornings, when no one I know is the slightest bit interested in his kind of babble;
5. that old chestnut — the CBC bureaucracy, which has to justify its existence every so often by knocking heads and rearranging the landscape whether anyone is interested or not.
And by the way, it’s a lame joke for the CBC now to claim that it’s a voice for jazz music. This is the outfit that dumped the reboubtable Don Warner and his wonderful jazz show a few years back.
“Tonic” as a substitute? They’ve got to be kidding — such ersatz fare should be recognized for what it is — bubbly background buzz for driving home. Unfortunately it’s in the wrong time slot.
I can tell you that members of that vaunted “younger demographic” who I happen to know don’t give a fig about this new marketing thrust other loyal CBC listeners are tuning into a couple of Seattle stations that provide an alternative.
Mother CBC has done it again — its way.
Eric Ricker
Nanaimo, B. C.
1. EmilyG Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 9:09 am I agree with Eric. Especially about Gregory Charles!
2. Elisabeth Silvester Says:
April 9th, 2008 at 2:30 pm I pretty well gave up on CBC years ago other than for a few favorite programs now all gone or messed up with too much chatter informed by what appears to be an enforced (and missguided) populism. I now listen to American classical music stations, regional and WQXR. I think that I must not be alone in this and think it is a Shame! It seems to be that various governments have been systematically destroying the CBC over 20 years or so by a thousand cruel cuts. Perhaps we should stop protesting and invent a National Public Radio for Canada which is politically and culturally independent. These comments are for inspiration and encouragement rather than publication
===
04/10/08
Heidi Krutzen to Premier Campbell
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:53 pm
April 10, 2008
Dear Premier Campbell,
We had the opportunity of meeting several times when you lived in my building. On more than one occasion, you even helped lift my harp bench. I also taught your niece for many, many years.
I have been very impressed with what your party has done for the environment since you have been in office. I am writing to you now, to ask if you might be equally interested in culture in Canada? It seems the Tory’s are trying to destroy our cultural heritage on many different levels but in particular with the dismantling of our Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the CBC Radio Orchestra. One can only assume that all of the decisions passed down are a direct attempt to make the CBC redundant so that there is no need for government support and hence the corporation can be privatized. This is just the beginning. Perhaps bill C-10 is the next step to muzzling the arts? The impact on BC is huge, the impact on Canada even bigger.
On March 27 the CBC Radio Orchestra (CRO) was terminated. This orchestra has been a jewel in our city and has contributed to Canadian culture for the last 70 years. It lives up to it’s mandate fully which is to ” make engaging musical radio programs, commission and perform works by Canadian composers, showcase Canadian performers and conductors, and discover and expose Canadian excellence.” The orchestra is well supported, is one of the top orchestras in North America, and is not market driven (rare in the orchestral world). The cost of the orchestra is $600,000 a year, “the amount it costs to purchase a starter home in North Vancouver.” The CRO was just entering a new phase with a wonderful new French-Canadian conductor, opportunities to tour, and a clear, inspiring vision for the future. Destroying this orchestra, for no apparent reason, is the equivalent of “taking Margaret Atwood off the shelf, and the Group of Seven off of the walls” – it simply shouldn’t be allowed.
The impact on Vancouver’s classical music community is substantial. As well as giving musicians here a sense of pride, a creative environment of excellence and innovation, the CRO helps support both musicians from the Vancouver Symphony and the Vancouver Opera. The work provided by the CRO helps to keep the musical community here vibrant and alive, and allows many of us to keep Vancouver as our base. The CRO has also been instrumental in the promotion, nurturing, and awareness of Canada’s great composers, as well as the launching of numerous wonderful solo artists from across the country.
The decision making at the CBC is ideological and not economic. These changes which have already gutted CBC Radio 2 will soon move to CBC TV as well. The conflict of interest runs extremely deep: Hubert Lacroix, President and CEO of the CBC, is a merger and acquisitions lawyer and friend of Prime Minister Harper and the Director of Music at CBC, Mark Steinmetz’s father is chair of the board of the Songwriters Association. On Radio 2 alone, eleven programs have been cut, classical music has been reduced to five hours a day, the classical division of CBC records has been terminated (CBC records just won a Grammy for a recording with James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony), the Young Composers Competition has been eliminated, as has the Concerto Competition for Young Performers. This is a systematic, well thought-out destruction of our classical music heritage and of the value it provides in our community and to our children. The idea that we can only absorb pop culture and nothing more, is saddening. How will the rest of the world look at us – we have been leaders in this field until now – and with the Olympics here, all eyes will be on us and what Canada has to offer culturally. What will we say to them?
The CBC needs to reverse their decisions and bring back what could be the pride of our country, nationally and internationally. We need a much bigger vision that sees a CBC with several stations (more bandwidth)- supporting all forms of music: classical, jazz, rock, indie, world – and a CBC where the CBC Radio Orchestra continues to flourish and provide unimaginable opportunities for all Canadian talent.
Please support the continuation, freedom, and cultural value of the living arts in Canada.
Sincerely,
Heidi Krutzen
Principal Harp, Vancouver Opera and CBC Radio Orchestra
Faculty, National Youth Orchestra of Canada
Sessional Faculty, UBC School of Music
Krutzen/McGhee Duo
Trio Verlaine
www.trioverlaine.com
1 comment
One Response to “Heidi Krutzen to Premier Campbell”
1. PKT Says:
April 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm Ms Kurtzen, That’s a most valiant effort on behalf of the CRO. But asking Premier Campbell to help on the issue fo the CRO is like asking to fox to guard the chicken coop… To wit, BC Rail. In spite of Mr. Campbell’s oft-repeated assurance before the election that a BC Liberal government will NOT sell off BC Rail. Guess who owns BC Rail now. Excuse me, in Mr Campbell’s eyes, BC Rail is only leased to CN Rail for 99 years or whatever the term is. That said, the President of CN Rail said “We bought BC Rail.” or something to that effect. You decide who’s right, or is it just semantics. To wit, BC Ferries. By turning BC Ferries into a private company, they have to pay GST on the ferries they purchased. Furthermore, FOI legislations don’t apply to them anymore. To wit, BC Hydro. Ooops, my mistake, not yet. But with the bills to enable the “Run of the River” – type projects – I don’t know the details of it but I’m sure you can easily call up your MLA or the Premier’s Office to find out. Enough said? Yes, I am a supporter of the CBC and a Friend of CDN Broadcasting. Thanks for your effort. PK
Marci Rabe comments on The Current
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:07 pm
[Comment from composer Marci Rabe on The Current segment, especially on the conversation that occured after Colin Miles spoke. Here is the source link]
As a composer, I was very disappointed with the conversation that
followed what Colin said. It seemed that the mentions of classical
music and composers were steeped in the past. Where were the
references about composers who are alive today… and the incredible
creative work that is most definitively relevant and being created,
here and now.
There were a couple of remarks about contemporary classical music, and
that it “…should be stressed more here”… however, this is not, in
my estimation, where the emphasis of the conversation was. Almost
immediately after this was said, the question was posed to the effect
of ‘why is it that we should be putting more cultural subsidies into
music of dead white men’?…
Well, really there is a need to be putting more into the music of living Canadian composers.
There was a comment about conservative programming… and fusing
classical music with other genres and disciplines… no mention however
that of course this is being done, and has been taking place for quite
some time now (although underfunded). Where is the infrastructure for
this work, this creativity that many youth do find engaging. Proof
found in composer in the classroom experiences (of which we need more).
The “references” to the very real and relevant contemporary classical
music and the creators of this music and art form were allusive. Near
invisible.
I feel like these pertinent points were lost in a homogenous definition of “classical” music.
Marci Rabe
Composer
1 comment
One Response to “Marci Rabe comments on The Current”
1. Emily G. Says:
April 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm Contemporary classical music should be “stressed more” on CBC Radio 2…does that mean they’ll play two contemporary classical pieces on The Signal every night instead of just one, or what?
James Ehnes not happy
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:20 am
Georgia Straight, Vancouver, April 10
Classical cuts draw sad note from James Ehnes
By Jessica Werb
James
Ehnes may be soaking up the sun in his adopted hometown of Bradenton,
Florida, but the 32-year-old Brandon, Manitoba–born violinist hasn’t
forgotten Canada. After all, his native country has been good to him:
five Juno Awards, an honorary doctorate from Brandon University, and a
fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada.
Vancouverites
feel a particular affinity with the former prodigy; it was our own
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra that accompanied him on his
Grammy-and-Juno-winning 2006 CD of violin concertos by Erich Wolfgang
Korngold, Samuel Barber, and William Walton. The love evidently flows
both ways.
“It’s always great working with Bramwell [Tovey,
the VSO’s music director],” the amiable Ehnes tells the Straight in a
call from his home. “I’ve known Bramwell for a very long time—he’s
probably one of the most important musical influences in my life. I
started working with him when he first came to Canada and was music
director in Winnipeg.…We’ve worked a lot together over the years, and
it was always something that I wanted to do: a recording with Bramwell.
So it was a great process. The orchestra really played so well.”
The
fact that this acclaimed recording is on the CBC Records label begs the
question: what does Ehnes make of all the changes to CBC Radio 2, which
include the dismantling of the 70-year-old CBC Radio Orchestra?
“There
have been a lot of movements in lots of departments of the CBC away
from support of classical music, and of course I can’t help but take
this extremely personally,” says the normally mild-mannered performer,
his voice rising. “The CBC Radio Orchestra—that’s an orchestra that
I’ve played with a number of times over the years.…I’m not happy about
the situation.…Where I grew up, the only opportunity to hear classical
music was CBC. And they seem to be quite proud of saying ‘We’re
retaining classical programming from 10 [a.m.] to 3 [p.m.] on
weekdays.’ But that’s when I was in school. I heard so much great music
before school and after school.…If classical music is gone [from the
CBC] or kept in those hours, then that’s it. You’re cutting off a form
of music, a form of education, to almost the entire country.”
The
speech hints at the sensitivity and passion Ehnes will bring to the
Vancouver Academy of Music stage from Tuesday to Friday (April 15 to
18), for a series of morning performances that will include Jean-Marie
Leclair’s Sonata Op. 9, No. 3, Béla Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 2, and
Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata Op. 18, accompanied by pianist Andrew
Armstrong.
If the program sounds a bit disjointed, it’s
because Ehnes wanted it that way. “I like my recital programs to be
very varied,” he explains, pulling himself together and adding, with
quintessentially Canadian modesty: “They’re just three pieces I enjoy a
lot that show off different aspects of the violin, and that, to me, set
a nice mood for the rest of the day.”
comments (0)
USA perspective on classical music loss
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 9:52 am
Excellent article that discusses the loss of classical music programming in the USA in the context of the CBC Radio Orchestra loss.
comments (0)
Chris Butterfield, April 7
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 9:43 am
The CBC is slamming the door on Canadian culture
Christopher Butterfield
Times Colonist
Monday, April 07, 2008
Last week, CBC brass called a meeting on less than 24 hours notice, flew out to Vancouver and told the CBC Radio Orchestra, a fixture in Canadian musical life for 70 years, that it would give its final concert in November. Why should we care?
Culture in this country is hard-won. Canada is not an old world, with a couple of thousand years of art and struggle behind us. We are still very new, the result of colonization, profoundly aware of our differences from the dominant cultures, both founding and current. Every artistic and musical impulse in this country is made in some kind of reaction to British/American/European culture.
Because of Canadian content rules brought in by the CRTC in the early ’70s that required broadcasters to program 30 per cent Canadian music, we now have a huge popular music industry.
Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Sarah McLachlan, k.d. lang, Alanis Morissette, Arcade Fire, and on and on, are the beneficiaries of this legislation.
But wait a minute. This is all popular music. It’s created for a market. Not all music is written for a mass audience.
Nor, by comparison, is a lot of visual art. To see visual art, we go to public art galleries. Many of them frequently exhibit art that can be controversial. That is one of the functions of art: to provoke.
In spite of frequent complaints, no public art gallery has yet been closed in this country. The outcry would be huge. The CBC used to be the equivalent of an art gallery for music. It broadcast material that had no commercial appeal. But it saw its function as similar to an art gallery’s — a place where new work can be shown to the public.
Who plays this uncommercial music? Soloists, chamber groups, choirs, orchestras. One orchestra that is especially good at it is the CBC Radio Orchestra. Part of its mandate is the regular commissioning and performing of music by Canadian composers.
Keep thinking of the CBC as an art gallery, and the orchestra as the space devoted to new work by Canadian artists. By terminating the orchestra, the CBC has closed the contemporary gallery.
But, you say, there are lots of art galleries. Yes, but there is only one CBC Orchestra. But there are lots of other orchestras, you say. Yes, but with the exception of the Esprit Orchestra in Toronto, there is only one with creation at the core of its mandate.
I teach students the art of music composition. One of the things I tell them is that they live in a society that does not require art to have commercial value in order to be of value.
The CBC is gradually dismantling this idea, one program at a time. The old song says “You don’t miss your water ’til your well runs dry.”
If we allow the CBC to cut the Radio Orchestra, we’ll regret it, because we’ll never get it back. And it’ll be one more step toward a homogenized CBC whose musical purpose is undemanding background noise.
Christopher Butterfield is associate professor of composition in the School of Music at the University of Victoria.
Times Colonist (Victoria) 2008
comments (0)
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward blog
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: morlock [at] 2:20 am
This article is a reprint from Alex Waterhouse-Hayward’s blog
The Benign Neglect Of A Vancouver Orchestra
Saturday, March 29, 2008
In
all the various articles in the Vancouver media of the demise of the
CBC Radio Orchestra in September none mention that our nation’s
orchestra was never Canada’s but our very own Vancouver’s. When it was
first founded by Ira Dilworth in 1938 it was the CBC Vancouver Chamber
Orchestra. In 1980 it became the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. Toronto took
possesion only in 2000 when it acquired its present name the CBC Radio
Orchestra.
In the 60s I used to listen to Willis Conover’s jazz program in Voice of America.
From Mexico City I was able to find the station in short wave. Conover
familiarized me with cool jazz, the Westcoast California brand of jazz
and performers such as Gerry Mulligan, Les McCann and many others.
These were unavailable in Mexico City record stores. I was not aware
that I was listening to propaganda.
I now love my Canada with
its billboard-free highways. But we have more to offer to the world
than that. Consider just Vancouver. My daughter Ale returned from
Mexico City, not too long ago with a Mexico City Sunday paper. I noted
that it had two pages of dance venues, two for theater and the same for
classical music. This was astounding until I noticed the music was a
surefire 19th century repertoire, the plays (the best of them) were
Travels With My Aunt and the worst glorified soap operas. Dance was a
legion of dancing swans. There was no experimental music or theatre or
modern dance. There was nothing that cannot be found on any given day
in our own “struggling world-class” city with its rich modern and
classical dance culture, just penned experimental plays and new music
concerts or concerts of the lesser known fantastic period of the 17th
century, and a new music scene that struggles but still surprises.
Last night I attended a concert of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra
with my daughter Hilary and her two daughters, Rebecca and Lauren. This
was a reduced orchestra (the normal one is bigger) of a violin, viola,
viola da gamba (or cello), violon and fortepiano. Even the PBO knows of
troubled times and often performs in a “pocket orchestra” form. Many
national orchestras are beginning to do the same. They spread the work
around.
In the 50 and 60s I drew enough maps of Africa using a
red pencil to mark the borders of the British properties, protectorates
and colonies to learn that the world was being swallowed up into
empires. I thought that nationalism was dead and we would soon become
one happy capitalist conglomerate nation. I was wrong and so were the
experts. Nationalism is alive and well and the concept is spreading.
I
was talking to a CBC producer friend. I asked him, “Why didn’t the CBC
Radio Orchestra travel to the north of Canada to promote its brand of
music?” I was astounded when he answered, “They went in September.” All
the good things that this Vancouver-based orchestra has done to spread
culture in Canada has been unreported. That emminent and cultured
American Senator, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan would only smile.
When I wrote about the CBC Radio Orchestra here
Bernardi had not yet stepped down (to be replaced by trombonist Alain
Trudel, in itself an unique Canadian concept). I did not mention that
the patrician conductor, John Eliot Gardiner avoids mentioning his stay
in Vancouver in his lofty curriuculum vitae. Benign neglect must have
been in full force by then. I state my fears that the CBC Radio
Orchestra is one of the last bastions for the performance and (very
important) recording of works by Canadian contemporary composers.
All
the above and specifically my mentioning Wilis Conover and the Voice of
America is patent evidence that the CBC Vancouver Orchestra (as I will
always remember it) was a potential Canadian cultural gift to the world
that was never used to its true potential. Can you imagine the columns
of copy that would have been generated by :
Canadian Cultural Icon Plays To Its Troops in Afghanistan
Or:
Canadian Orchestra Plays In The West Bank.
Our
much lauded but strained concept that Canada is a peace keeping nation
would be far better promoted with cultural contributions to the world
with our music, theater, dance and visual arts. A cultural peace corps
of sorts under the umbrella of the CBC would promote our way of life to
the world. Unfortunately the concept of culture in the modern CBC is to
announce and promote, ad nauseum, the name of Jian Ghomeshi. A
one-man-orchestra is cheaper.
Also
not generally known nor have they ever been acknowledged is how CBC
producers George Laverock and Karen Wilson (in other countries they
would have been a legion, not two) and the CBC Radio Orchestra put
together wonderful concerts, recorded for the radio and on CDs between
1979 and 1989. I can remember the gaunt and over-worked faces of those
two (Laverock and Wilson) who with the help of virtuoso recording
engineers like Don Harder made music that dazzled Europe. I know that
Harder was often wooed by European recording companies and we all know
how happy Cecilia Bartoli is when Mario Bernardi is present in her
performances.
In the pictures here that’s conductor Mario Bernardi and violinist Corey Cerovsek in rehearsal in the CBC’s Studio One.
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Disclaimer
Filed under: About the Blog
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:28 am
This site contains information for educational purposes only. The opinions expressed in these pages belong to their authors. The host of this blog is providing this as a service to the public.
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Don Davies, Federal NDP candidate supports us
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:27 am
April 9, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DAVIES CALLS ON FEDS TO RESTORE FUNDING TO THE CBC RADIO ORCHESTRA
Vancouver, B.C. – Don Davies, Federal NDP candidate for Vancouver Kingsway, called on the governing body of the CBC and the federal government to ensure continued funding for the CBC Radio Orchestra.
He also announced that he will be taking part in the National Day of Action, planned for Friday, April 11th, to protest the decision last month of CBC management to dismantle the Vancouver-based CBC Radio Orchestra.
“The CBC Vancouver Orchestra has a proud tradition of music-making and forms a vital part of the cultural heritage of this country,” Davies said
“For 70 years the Orchestra has brought classical music to the people of Canada through live and recorded concerts on CBC radio. It has also been a champion of Canadian music, providing a national audience for Canadian composers that is simply not available anywhere else.”
Davies also expressed concern about the adverse impact that the Orchestra’s axing will have on the classical music scene in Vancouver and on the livelihoods of classically trained artists. Davies said that the CBC Radio Orchestra employs musicians “whose outstanding talents put them in the top ranks of the world’s classically trained musicians.”
“With the planned dismantling of the CBC Radio Orchestra, Vancouver risks the loss of some of our most accomplished musicians to orchestras in the US and Europe. We can ill afford to lose the talents of our local artists and deny the next generation of musicians the opportunity to pursue their careers in Canada,” Davies said.
Davies also stressed the cultural diversity present in Vancouver Kingsway. He said that its citizens support the preservation of this mosaic.
“Vancouver Kingsway has a wide array of world music, art and culture. Preserving the classical orchestral tradition adds to this rich tapestry,” Davies said.
Davies questioned the claims made by CBC that the public broadcaster can no longer afford to fund the Orchestra. Davies countered that “The Radio Orchestra’s budget is relatively modest—less than one million dollars a year. That is a small price to pay for the immense contribution the Orchestra makes to the musical life of the country.”
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Festival Vancouver supports the rallies
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:23 am
Dear friends and supporters of Festival Vancouver,
We’re passing on some information to you about the CBC Radio Orchestra. As you may know, a decision has been made by CBC management to disband the Orchestra as of this fall.
The Radio Orchestra has been a central part of the Festival’s schedule for 6 of our past 7 seasons, performing with skill, artistry, passion and evident joy in its work.
Because the Orchestra has been such an important part of our Festival and we want that relationship to continue, we’re passing on some information about the rallies that are planned for this Friday, April 11 to protest the CBC’s decision.
We hope it will be of interest to you and we thank you for taking a moment to read on.
The Staff of Festival Vancouver
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INSPIRATION
Filed under: •••General•••, Open Letters, Words about activism
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:09 am
“The struggle of people against power,” wrote Milan Kundera, ” is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
[Thanks to Nancy DiNovo for the quote]
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Russ Germain response to John Doyle
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:07 am
Subject: Re: Note to Classical Music Fans
Dear John:
I have read your column for many years and have found them to be very interesting, for the most part. Thank you for those thoughtful words.
But your latest directed at classical music fans is so biased against a minority already under seige as to be unfair, unbalanced and inaccurate. First, you state that you don’t write about radio and then proceed to use CBC Radio 2 as a basis for comparison for Bill C-10. You know this is an apples-to-oranges comparison, and far beneath your best.
You go on to state that, “there is hardly a shortage of classical music for consumption. The stuff is everywhere.” I assume you mean on radio. If you mean on disc, in stores such as HMV, have you shopped recently for classical music? Many of these stores simply don’t even bother to carry classical titles any more, and if they do it is such an impoverished selection as to be laughable. If you mean on television – your journalistic bailiwick – viewers in border cities do far, far better tuning into PBS stations than anything Canada offers, including the CBC.
Have you listened to all radio across Canada to be so confident to say that classical music “is everywhere”? I have not, but having worked in radio for 38 years in western and central Canada, I can assure you that classical music was never “everywhere”. CBC Radio 2 (currently so-called) was, and still is, almost the only radio outlet that carries classical music. The vast majority of private stations trade in what you refer to as “Canadian pop, rock and country music.” They do this because there is profit in advertising; not so with classical.
Here in Toronto the only serious alternative for classical music on radio is Moses Znaimer’s CFMZ. I worked at this station for two years before he bought it. For classical music fans, Moses has reduced his playlist to warhorse classics and decided that movie music, pop musicals, and singers such as Barbara Streisand now comprise the “new” classical. This in no way gratifies the serious classical fan.
And what of Radio 2? This network carried upwards of 15 hours a weekday of classical music and commentary until the recent decision to overhaul programming. We will now have 5 hours a weekday, not all strictly classical. That is a reduction of two-thirds in daily classical programming. For the serious classical music listener, is it any wonder they are outraged?
I will also note that classical music listeners are not the elitist snobs that columnists such as yourself try to paint them. Many are also listeners of contemporary music, which is ubiquitous, certainly compared to classical. But when those of us who enjoy serious classical music want to hear it on radio, the ability to do so is rapidly disappearing.
I can only say, John, that first, you should stick to your knitting. Second, Note to John Doyle: Get Over Yourself.
Russ Germain, Toronto
1 comment
One Response to “Russ Germain response to John Doyle”
1. EmilyG Says:
April 10th, 2008 at 8:50 am Hooray for Russ Germain!
===
04/11/08
Wilmer Fawcett responds to McGuire
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 6:15 pm
April 11
Dear Jennifer McGuire,
I want to thank you first of all for responding to my messages. I am very
sure that you must be run off your feet right now, dealing with all that is
going on, and I appreciate your taking the time to reply.
I just returned from the rally (at least the Vancouver branch of it), and
was very pleased to see such enthusiasm and support for the retention and
reinstatement of the CBC Radio Orchestra. Leaving to one side for the moment
all the other concerns about programming and ideological changes at the CBC,
I want to focus my plea on our cultural jewel, the orchestra.
It is for me a great blessing to have been a member of this orchestra from
1967 to 2004, may I add a great privilege too, and I am ever grateful to the
CBC for the experience. I was fortunate too that my years in the orchestra
were those of its best and highest artistic achievement. In saying that I am
not lessening the impact of recent years, but drawing focus on what the
orchestra was and meant in the years before the cutbacks, erosions and
emasculations. Under Jack Avison the orchestra well fulfilled its mandate
and raison d’etre: commissions and realizations of works by Canadian
composers and featuring Canadian performers in studio recorded broadcasts
and records/CDs (and also musical rarities that were not in the standard
orchestra rep). Who else was doing this, or will do in the future? My mind
leaps to the wonderful recordings with Judith Forst of works by Murray
Schafer and Malcolm Forsyth, but there are so many over the years…Shauna
Rolston playing Hatzis…
I am so very devastated that this incredible heritage of Canadian music in
the CD catalogue is being lost! So much of it recorded by our wonderful
orchestra. Thank goodness (for me) that I have kept many of the vinyls and
CDs of the orchestra over the decades, but what of future Canadians? What of
children growing up never knowing or hearing their musical heritage?
Destroying this catalogue of recordings is like expunging the Group of Seven
or Emily Carr from public accessibility or art courses.
I want to go on record as demanding of the CBC and the government (where is
the “conserve” in Conservative?):
-restoration of the CBC Radio Orchestra
-returning the orchestra to what it does best, studio broadcasts and
recordings of the creative talents of our own composers and performers
-retention of the catalogue of recordings made by the CBC
I and fellow music lovers coast-to-coast and in areas of the US where the
CBC reaches, and in fact far and wide as recordings and broadcasts reach,
beg you to reconsider these dreadful cuts and especially the orchestra. It
costs pennies to operate in comparison to the vast sums wasted on so many
things (need I mention Afghanistan?) Canadians are very forgiving, and
everybody makes mistakes. Please don’t let this mistake deprive us of our
rich musical heritage, Canadian music and performers collaborating with the
radio orchestra, and a legacy of recorded music. Simply playing remote
pickups of more Beethoven and Mahler, while nice in themselves, are no
replacement for our own musical legacy.
Wilmer Fawcett, Vancouver
2 comments
2 Responses to “Wilmer Fawcett responds to McGuire”
1. Jason Says:
April 12th, 2008 at 10:52 am Wilmer, Yikes, For gods sake man, don’t mention Afghanistan in the same breath as the CBC orchestra. Doing so exposes you as the very sort of ivory-tower elitist naïf that you need to distance yourself from. It should be clear to everyone that the CBC orchestra is being disbanded because it’s not being perceived as consistent with our times. Canada’s Afghanistan commitment, dreadful as it is, represents the reality of the geopolitical world we now live in. It would be like writing Goebbels to protest the disbanding of the Jewish orchestra in Nazi Germany with an argument that the orchestra costs less than that wasteful war in Russia. I’m with you on saving the CBC orchestra, but please don’t make such irresponsible comments public. Sincerely, Jason
2. site admin Says:
April 12th, 2008 at 4:16 pm Jason: why do you say Wilmer is “irresponsible” to mention spending on the military in the same breath as talking about culture? It is not at all irresponsible: it is his view. It was also the view of Martin Luther King Jr., who said “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” I think Wilmer is in good company. -John Oliver
April 11 in the press
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 5:37 pm
Victoria Times
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Bill Siksay & Jack Layton demand protection for CBC classical programming
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:05 pm
Mr. Bill Siksay (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Mr. Speaker, today outside CBC facilities listeners will raise a ruckus for Radio 2 to express serious concerns about the cuts to classical music programming and the disbanding of the CBC Radio Orchestra.
CBC Radio Canada is key to the development and promotion of classical music in Canada. The CBC Radio Orchestra, based in Vancouver, is an important national cultural institution, one of the few in the west.
Will the government adopt the unanimous heritage committee recommendations and provide increased stable, multi-year funding to CBC Radio Canada?
Hon. Jim Abbott (Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the response is twofold.
First, that report is now being considered by the minister and she will respond in due course.
With respect to the decisions of the CBC, as the member well knows, as he is a member of the committee, we have invited the executives of the CBC to come before the committee to explain to us their future plans with respect to the CBC.
Statement by Jack Layton on the cuts to classical music at CBC Radio 2
Like many Canadians I grew up hearing classical music on CBC Radio. My appreciation of this beautiful and important art form was shaped in those hours.
Today, Canadian musicians and composers are among the most demanded artists on the world stage. Ben Heppner, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Anton Kuerti, Angela Hewitt, James Ehnes – these are just a few of the Canadian classical musicians stunning audiences worldwide. CBC Radio showcased and helped build the careers of these and many other artists. Without the crucial exposure provided by CBC Radio, many Canadian classical musicians would not have the careers that they have today.
Classical music is an important part of our cultural heritage. CBC Radio plays an important role in preserving and building on that heritage. I join with Canadians across the country who are demanding that classical programming at CBC Radio be protected.
1 comment
One Response to “Bill Siksay & Jack Layton demand protection for CBC classical programming”
1. Joyce Cormack Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 7:19 pm Thank You Jack, Please continue the fight in the hearings to save CBC FM as we know it. We are so thankful to have had CBC in our lives and our lives have been enriched by the superior programming. It seems someone has an ulterior motive to detroy the CBC and we must not allow this to happen. Please fight on behalf of all of us who are addicted to this station and who will be totally lost without it. Thank you Joyce Cormack Winnipeg MB
Ursula M. Rempel, Univ. of Manitoba
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:41 pm
April 11, 2008
Not that long ago CBC radio fans were rallying in support of locked-out
employees. Now we are again rallying to save “our CBC.”
What is wrong with you people? CBC1 can–and does–offer all the
programming of the “popular variety” that anyone interested in this could
want. As well, there are plenty of FM stations throughout the country
offering “easy listening/jazz.” We don’t need yet another glut on the
market.
CBC2 is a Canadian institution. It is one of the “wonders of Canada.” It is
respected throughout the world.
I am a senior scholar at the Faculty of Music, University of Manitoba, and
Winnipeg’s 98.3 FM were almost my first words to my music history students
for 37 years. You got many converts as a result of my classes.
I am also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Alliance
for Women in Music. Our advocacy committee initiated a radio request program
four years ago. CBC2 has been listed as a radio station amenable to playing
works by women.
It seems I must have my beloved CBC2 removed from the list.
Ursula M. Rempel
Senior Scholar
Faculty of Music
University of Manitoba
===
04/12/08
April 11 PRESS REPORTS
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:11 pm
For a list of links to articles from across Canada that reported on the National Day of Protest “Raise a Ruckus for Radio 2″ please go here.
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VIDEO: Kathleen Rudolph, Toronto
Filed under: Stuff to watch
Posted by: site admin [at] 5:14 pm
VIDEO FOOTAGE
http://collaborativepiano.blogspot.com/2008/04/cbc-rally-in-toronto-part-1-kathleen.html
Kathleen Rudolph, principal flute of the CBC Radio Orchestra speaks at rally in Toronto, April 11, 2008.
Thanks to Chris Foley for posting.
1 comment
One Response to “VIDEO: Kathleen Rudolph, Toronto”
1. Chris Foley Says:
April 12th, 2008 at 6:36 pm Thanks for the link. There are two more videos to come, one with Robert Stevenson of Arraymusic and the third with Russell Smith of the Globe and Mail.
Don’t pass the Bach, fans say
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:44 pm
Don’t pass the Bach, fans say
The rain fell pianissimo but their voices were forte as classical music
buffs protested CBC cuts
Apr 12, 2008 04:30 AM
John Terauds
Classical Music Critic
You don’t have to account for Mother Nature when launching a protest on
Facebook.
In the climate-controlled, rain-free web, passionate defenders of classical
music on CBC Radio now number more than 20,000 on two Facebook groups. But
protests yesterday at CBC offices across the country could not begin to
approach those numbers.
Undeterred by the rain, about 300 people huddled in a tight circle in front
of the Canadian Broadcast Centre on Front St. W.
People representing a full demographic spectrum listened for an hour to
arguments why the CBC should cancel plans to dismantle the 70-year-old CBC
Radio Orchestra in Vancouver and revamp music programming on Radio 2.
It looked like roughly half the crowd was made up of musicians and arts
workers. There were faces from the Toronto Symphony, the Canadian Opera
Company, Tafelmusik, the Elmer Iseler Singers and a large contingent of
artists active on the new music scene.
The CBC has said classical music will remain at the core of daytime and
weekend programming on Radio 2, and that money saved by disbanding the
orchestra will be used to bring ensembles from other cities to national
attention via live broadcasts.
Actual programming changes are still months away, and the CBC has not
provided details. Into this vacuum have stepped thousands of people worried
that the public broadcaster will eliminate classical music from its airwaves
altogether.
James Rolfe, president of the Canadian League of Composers, read a letter by
fellow composer Christopher Butterworth.
Butterworth argues that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission made pop music possible, thanks to Canadian content rules set up
in the 1970s.
In turn, the CBC’s second radio network helped classical music flourish over
recent decades.
“We live in a society that does not require art to have commercial value for
it to be valuable,” Butterworth wrote.
He added that introducing people to art, literature and music cannot be
defined in terms of popularity or cost alone.
Curiously, not one among the impassioned voices referred to the statue of
Glenn Gould sitting a couple of metres from the microphone.
The late piano legend abandoned live performances in the late 1950s,
focusing his energy on studio work – much of it at the CBC.
Would the corporation’s current managers have accommodated Gould’s eccentric
imagination the way an earlier generation did?
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Brent Ledger: CBC Radio’s classic mistake
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:37 pm
CBC Radio’s classic mistake
Toronto Star
Apr 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Brent Ledger
You’ve got to hand it to the folks at CBC Radio 2. Not content with running
a historic, irreplaceable service unlike any other in Canada, they decided
to give us something really useful. Like another easy listening station.
Early last month, CBC Radio 2 announced it was going to ditch much of the
stuff that made it distinctive (classical music) and play a lot more pop,
including such underplayed artists as Diana Krall and Joni Mitchell.
Then it immediately went on the defensive (in a full-page newspaper ad) and
said it would still be playing a lot of classical music, really it would,
it’s just that it would be playing it when no one was listening, on Sunday
and weekday afternoons.
A few days later, CBC bigwig Richard Stursberg went even farther and said
none of the new music would be “pap . . . schlock . . . (or) dumbed down.”
Problem is, the rot has already set in.
One day, I tuned in and got some ancient Abbott and Costello routine;
another, it was an opera pastiche overlaid with the voice of Bugs Bunny.
Tonic, the former jazz program, has slumped into a soothing sleepy-time
mediocrity and the midday program seems determined to prove it’s hip by
interrupting the symphonies with a little suave supper-club jazz.
I don’t know exactly who wants this kind of grating mix, but it certainly is
unimpeachably dull. And remember, this is just the beginning.
The new changes don’t come into effect until September, by which time, I’m
sure, they’ll have acknowledged the obvious and renamed the whole network
“Candlelight and Wine.”
It’s not like I find my identity, gay or otherwise, on CBC Radio. Certain
composers are obviously gay – Barber, Copland, Tchaikovsky; possibly Ravel,
Handel and Schubert – and some folks will tell you that gays gravitate to
certain kinds of music. Opera, maybe, or the high-romantic schmaltz of
Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Personally, I veer in the opposite direction,
toward something a little leaner, sharper and more modernist, and CBC Radio
has never been very good at satisfying that yen.
Rare is the time you get to hear any adventuresome 20th or 21st century
music on CBC Radio 2. In all my years of listening, I don’t think I’ve ever
heard a piece by the great gay German composer Hans Werner Henze or the
99-year-old American wonder Elliott Carter, to name but two underplayed
masters of the modern repertoire.
As for Canadian classical – it’s all but inaudible. With the possible
exception of the silky smooth Marjan Mozetich, it’s largely confined to
late-night ghettos.
And, still, I listened. Because, once upon a time, CBC Radio played mostly
classical music and that was generally agreed to be an important – nay,
absolutely necessary – contribution to the national cultural life.
Unlike pop music which tends to telegraph a limited range of widely
recognized emotions – I’m hurtin’, I’m horny, I will survive – classical
music goes places where language and words don’t.
Along with the standard stories of triumph, despair and even fate knocking
on the door, the great pieces generate a thousand tiny insights and
intuitions, audible to you alone.
You can read Stalinist politics into Shostakovich’s mocking, melancholy
symphonies or Benjamin Britten’s fondness for young men into his voluptuous
last opera, the spectacular Death in Venice, but you can also just sit back,
review your thoughts and see your soul.
And that’s what we’re going to lose this fall, in favour, I guess, of some
ditzy pop singer yammering on about his broken heart and surgin’ urges.
Like there’s not enough of that as it is.
============
Comment from Larry Lake, host of the discontinued program “Two New Hours”. April 12
I’ve sent Mr. Ledger an email in which I gently suggested that his long
history of listening to CBC obviously did not include the 29 years of Two
New Hours. Had he taken the trouble to listen, he’d have heard operas,
symphonies, ballet scores and chamber works by Hans Werner Henze as well as
a number of lengthy and probing interviews. He’d also have heard many, many
works by Elliott Carter, including a full two-hour celebration of his
97th-birthday with Mr. Carter as my guest, and countless more works by many
of the greatest composers of our time, Canadian or foreign and of all sexual
orientations. I particularly recall an extensive feature on the celebrated
American composer David Del Tredici. Among the many things we discussed on
the air was his pride in being a role model for young gay artists.
While I appreciate Mr. Ledger’s points, his argument is weakened by his lack
of knowledge of CBC programming.
comments (0)
Classical Music as a Cohesive Political Force
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:35 pm
by David Dorrington
April 11, 2008
I live in Richmond BC. Our municipality is about 60% Chinese Canadian and I have been thinking about the children of those immigrants who train as classical musicians. I cannot generalize about what percentage of children are involved in classical music or if the children of new Canadians are more likely to become involved ( perhaps someone knows of studies ? ) It seems to me that where there is a cultural adjustment going on for a family between the old home culture and the new Canadian culture it would make a lot of sense from the family’s point of view to encourage their children to be involved in what is perceived to be “value neutral” music.
Children like music and gravitate towards it automatically. What family of new Canadians will willingly encourage their children to listen to Rap music and adopt the values of those performers ????
Ever since the 1960’s, and perhaps from before that, popular music has represented the gap between the generations. Each new style has served to define the generation that adopts it as distinct from the previous one. This has in another form been going on for hundreds of years but the changes were embodied in dance forms and communal dancing, which exaggerated the physical difference between young and old, but did not exclude any particular generation from participation.
That is now changed and many forms of popular music can now be seen as divisive rather than cohesive. Rap music for example not only seeks to differentiate between generations but it also seeks to differentiate on racial grounds as well. Goths don’t mix with C&W and neither group would listen to Techno. Old people are definitely not encouraged to participate in young peoples music.
One very important value that can be assigned to classical music is that it can work as a cohesive force within the community.
Because the time line of classical music is so long, the revolutionary aspects of various forms (Beethoven) have long ago been absorbed into our culture and the study and practice of classical music can be seen as what I described as “value neutral”
Therefore it is important for all politicians whose ridings include new Canadians to think very hard about the importance of classical music as a strongly positive cohesive force in their communities and in the larger Canadian culture.
David
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View from a British writer
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:06 pm
Hello,
I’d like to add my voice to the protest at the distressing changes to CBC
Radio 2. I’m a British novelist, award-winning journo and broadcaster who
spends as much time as she can in Vancouver. Tom Allen, Rick Philips and the
much-missed Shelley Solmes completed my classical music education. Hearing
their voices each time I returned to Canada was like being reunited with old
friends.
I’ve posted a couple of articles about the death of the CBC on my blog:
http://janettegriffithsnorthamerica.blogspot.com
You might like to add the blog to the ones listed on your page. And please,
feel free to use anything you want from the two posts. I am particularly fond
of the exchange between James McMillan and Daniel Barenboim during Barenboims’
2006 BBC Reith Lectures on “Hearing the neglected sense.” I think it sums up
the mysterious power of classical music and puts the lie to that inane slogan
“Everywhere music takes you”. Here is an excerpt from that piece:
And before all the anti-elitists check in, reminding us of the value of
popular music, here’s an exchange between conductor Daniel Barenboim and
composer James McMillan during Barenboim’s BBC Reith lectures. These are
similar to the Massey lectures; Barenboim’s theme was “Hearing – the neglected
sense.” You will see that Barenboim was left speechless by the power and depth
of the argument.
JAMES McMILLAN: Hello my name is James McMillan, I’m another composer.
Recently the English musicologist Julian Johnson produced a fascinating book
called Who Needs Classical Music? He implies that serious music has suffered
in the face of the apparent triumph of the visual and the verbal, but also of
what he would see as the banal and even the populist. And therefore my
question is this -
“What is it about serious music that baffles and indeed in some cases offends
the advocates of an ever increasingly ubiquitous, narrow, some might say
debased popular culture? Is it its very ability to rise from the mundane? Is
it the suggestion that there may be such a thing as a secret inner life which
cannot be reduced to a rigorously enforced commonality, that there may be no
such thing indeed as a closed universe?”
DANIEL BARENBOIM:
Wow!
Best wishes,
Janette Griffiths
comments (0)
David Berner
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:05 am
Great great article from the Vancouver Province discusses why culture matters, why cutting the orchestra is a false economy, etc. Highly recommended!
Here is a reprint of the text found at the link above.
We need quality architecture, art and music to remain a vibrant city
David Berner
The Province
Friday, April 11, 2008
Today,
thousands of people will be taking part in protests in front of CBC
buildings across the country. They have called this a “National Day of
Action to Save CBC Radio 2 and the CBC Radio Orchestra.”
Seems like a good occasion to reflect on what we may mean when we speak of “culture” here on the wet edge.
I
am in complete sympathy with those who have decried this move by CBC
brass to dismantle the last remaining radio orchestra in North America,
and a damn good one to boot.
To disable this treasure
under the guise of saving less than a million dollars is to define the
old adage, “penny- wise and pound-foolish.”
But what
is even more offensive is the ready answer from so many citizens:
“Good, kill the damn thing, I don’t want my tax money paying for a
government radio/TV/Internet mess.”
Yes, the CBC
needs a major overhaul. It wanders in mandarin deserts, showing a
thousand faces to the shifting sands of taste. It is rarely mindful of
a central vision or purpose, in spite of the fact that its core values
are written into national legislation.
But, it is an important and valuable institution. Disband it and you will have the choice of rap or rap and pap or pap.
For
all its sorry mistakes, the CBC brings us, albeit in ever-decreasing
small doses, the alternate programming that commercial broadcasters
will never offer.
The same hick town outrage emerged
when the B.C. government announced on March 7 a $50-million gift to the
Vancouver Art Gallery for a possible re-location from its present site
at Georgia and Howe. “Spend that money on homelessness” went the cry.
Of course, we should spend many, many millions on building adequate housing for the homeless.
But what’s that got to do with funding the art gallery? This is not an either/or proposition.
And
while we’re at it, how about the federal government spending $100
million on the Vancouver Maritime Museum and the Vancouver Museum?
Did you know that secreted away in the dusty bowels of that A-frame on Kits Beach are genuine artifacts from the Titanic?
You’ve never seen them because there is no space to show them. This is not a Leonardo DiCaprio movie. This is the real thing.
This
city exists and functions because it is a port. It’s those freighters
in English Bay that take away potash and bring in Toyotas and blue
jeans that make the place tick. Shouldn’t we celebrate that?
On
Tuesday night, Vancouver trumpeter Brad Turner, bassist Jodi Prosnick
and Cellar Jazz Club owner and record producer Cory Weeds swept the
National Jazz Awards. That too is an important part of West Coast
culture.
City Hall announced on March 27 another $11
million for the beer strip known as Granville Mall. This is somebody’s
idea of culture?
We need music and architecture and art.
Without them, life is one long dental appointment.
Posted by
David Berner
at
9:57 AM
comments (0)
===
04/13/08
Long-time CBC listeners reach for ‘off’ button
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:59 pm
William Neville
Updated: April 11 at 02:00 AM CDT
On April 3, Jennifer McGuire, executive director of radio for CBC English Services, posted a notice on the Internet which read, in part: “You may have heard about the exciting changes coming to Radio 2 next September… We’ll still be high quality… pushing boundaries with shows unlike any others… but we’ll be drawing from a broader, richer and diverse spectrum of music: classical, jazz, folk, world, R & B, singer-songwriter and roots… Current listeners can take comfort in the fact that classical will remain the most represented music genre on Radio 2. New listeners will be blown away by the shows we’re adding to the schedule…”
New listeners may or may not be blown away, but long-standing CBC listeners and advocates are feeling increasingly blown off. And many are now reaching for the “off” button.What the rosy public relations pitch conceals is the fact that weekday classical music programming will be reduced by more than 50 per cent and largely slotted for the middle of the day. Those in school or at work can go whistle. Moreover, the emphasis during those hours will apparently be on well-known and popular classics, potentially the classical equivalent of Muzak — or pablum. Brace yourselves for the prospect of lots of excerpts from Mozart’s Greatest Hits and Beethoven’s Top Ten.
There has been a loud and angry reaction to these proposals from many in the normally loyal CBC audience. This in itself is remarkable because there is frequently some reticence among those who would make the case for classical music — a reticence, no doubt, grounded in a reluctance to defend what might be caricatured as “high brow” or elitist. Moreover, notwithstanding the aging of the population, we live in an age which exalts and appeals to popular mass culture in all the major art forms, and is particularly oriented to youthful audiences. What is troubling is a general failure to recognize that popular culture is already well served on radio, television and the Internet and, equally, that classical music, an art form that ranks among the greatest achievements of human civilization, is not widely served by most media.
In its evolution over the last millennium, what we think of as classical music has always been enriched by the popular and the folk music of its time; but to appreciate that and to see the process continue, classical music must be able to coexist with other musical forms. It is a living tradition which encompasses not just the likes of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and their predecessors, but Shostakovich, Philip Glass and John Adams.And, lest it be thought that this music — both early and recent — is simply the preserve of aging populations of peoples of European origin, it bears noting that some of the greatest performing artists of classical music are young: Witness the internationally acclaimed Canadian violinist James Ehnes, the remarkable soprano Meesha Bruggergosman and the WSO’s dynamic conductor, Andrew Mickelthwate. Venezuela’s Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony will, next year, become conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the great American orchestras. Dudamel is 27.Moreover, increasing numbers of the most brilliant young performers of Western classical music come from places like Japan, China and Korea, even as classical music in the Eastern tradition is increasingly appreciated in the West.
Unfortunately, more is at stake here than just the future of classical music: The role and future of Canadian public broadcasting are also at issue. Since the creation of what is now the CBC by R.B. Bennett’s Conservative government in the 1930s, public broadcasting has been an element of our national psyche. Despite periodic bouts of controversy, public broadcasting — and radio especially — has served several important functions, not the least nation building. It has done this by bringing to the airwaves a particular mix, reflecting the whole country, of news, comment, documentaries, the arts — including music and particularly classical — which were often deemed unprofitable by commercial broadcasters.
Overwhelmingly, those who have supported public broadcasting have done so because it offered programming that commercial radio did not and probably could not.CBC’s new programming will make it much more like current offerings on many private commercial stations, particularly in larger urban areas. CBC will remain commercial free, of course — if one ignores CBC’s constant promotion of its own new and “exciting” programs. In significant measure, CBC radio’s raison d’etre, that it offered something valuable and unique, will be lost, and with it, one suspects, many of those who enjoyed it because it dared to be unique.
The 2007 programming changes in Radio 2 were extensive; those slated for 2008 will make Radio 2 unrecognizable. As the CBC remakes itself into something that looks more and more like the variety programming of private radio, it provides less and less reason for its current listeners to stay. The argument for even having a public broadcaster will become increasingly difficult to make. Since Radio 2 listeners are also taxpayers, why would they continue supporting that which they can readily get elsewhere? Indeed, why should they?
3 comments
3 Responses to “Long-time CBC listeners reach for ‘off’ button”
1. site admin Says:
April 14th, 2008 at 12:00 am This strikes me as the plan. CBC Management can spin all they like, but if the result is as Mr. Neville describes, then the CBC will no longer be able to justify its existence. This, in my view, is what has caused the outrage, not just CBC listeners being deprived of their programming, but their suspicion that they will ultimately be deprived of access to their own non-commercial culture.]
2. Wilmer Fawcett Says:
April 14th, 2008 at 11:10 am This is an excellent letter and states the issue in a nutshell. Why do we need the CBC to 1) duplicate what other stations are doing better and cheaper, 2) eliminate what CBC does best, or reduce it so drastically? The CBC was our non-commercial source for unique and alternative broadcasting, the repository of our own art and thought, and especially our own music. It was the voice of our own composers and performers, a place to go that was not driven and buffeted by the marketplace. How sad this is happening, and how angry are the voices in protest.
3. Philip Elliott Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am Here is a letter I sent to Ms. McGuire. It will be interesting to see when & if she responds; Please forgive the typos. Here is an e-mail I sent to Jennifer McGuire & I wil post a response IF I get one; Dear Ms McGuire; I am writing this e-mail concernng the proposed changes coming for CBC Radio 2 As you may well know by now, there are a group of us who are EXTREMELY unhappy with the proposed changes coming to CBC Radio 2. I consider myself a veteran listener to CBC Radio 2 for 30 years in one form or another. For a long time I lived out of town & either listened to CBC Radio 2 via cable or satellite dish on the old C band dishes. The current changes coming are unacceptable as far as myself & many others are concerned. CBC Radio 2 has AND always will be Canada’s vehicle for Classical music. For years CBC Radio 2 has done a great job of covering the Arts in this country up until last year. The idea of putting a ‘popular based’ live style program on a predminantly Classical network totally contradicts the current format. From what I see of the proposed changes, I have a rough idea as to what to expect with the programs ‘Weekender’ & ‘In the Key of Charles’ These are both horrifically bad programs & particularly on ‘Weekender’ I have noticed virtually no Classical music played on the show. That said, I have family who has been listening to CBC radio since it came on the air in 1937. She is totally appauled at the changes coming. At 86 years of age, she has no desire to get a computer. On that note, while the idea of an internet based network may be a good idea, it seems that you ARE forgetting those who do not have access to a computer, NOR can afford access to internet. What WOULD make more practical sense is to tale the proposed new format & put that on the internet as it seems that you are gearing to a more younger crowd who have more access to current technology. As you may be aware of, there is a group of us who ARE NOT HAPPY with what’s happening. This IS a total dumbing down of a once great institution. I have my own Facebook group which is slowly groin. As you will also note I have cc’d Ian Morrison in this e-mail. I get the impression that CBC DOES NOT CARE about how it listeners feel about changes. It appears to be ‘my way, or the highway’ This does not make for a democratic way of doing things. What would have been a better idea is to invite listeners to make suggestions as to what they would like to see happen on CBC Radio 2. Please take my e-mail seriouslly as this is something we listeners are VERY impassioned about & really do not want to see changes this bad to our beloved CBC Radio 2. Regards Philip Elliott
Charles Barber’s disgust
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 3:45 pm
13 April 2008
Dear Mr Stursburg and Ms McGuire:
Thank you for your form letter. It does a pleasant job
of accounting for what you purport to be doing.
Alas, the truth lies some distance from your version
of reality.
For example, you fail to mention your destruction of
the Young Composers’ Competition. You omit mention of
the fact that CBC Records has entirely abandoned its
commitment to classical music, and is busy destroying
its inventory of same.
Nowhere do you acknowledge that the CBC Radio
Orchestra, the very last of its kind in North America,
gives unique and singular identity to the music of our
nation. You seem utterly unaware of the power of radio
orchestras, in at least 27 other civilized nations, to
speak to their own cultural identities.
You overlook the difference in commitment between the
$11 million promised, and the $5 million delivered, in
terms of your most recent agreement with the AFofM. I
could go on… but you will only reply with another
form letter.
It is clear, from the ’spontaneous’ and wholly
disingenuous nature of your self-congratulatory and
costly display ads, that you foresaw some measure of
protest coming.
You have yet to take the full measure of public
disgust with your debasement of the CBC, its unique
and bold mandate, and the fact that its success cannot
be measured in the mercantile terms you delight in
applying.
You simply cannot imagine the numbers, and eloquence,
of Canadians who are appalled by your dereliction of
duty.
You have yet to realize that your actions will cost
you your jobs.
Again, I thank your for your manufactured reply. It is
as humane, well-founded, and humanly-oriented as the
rest of your decisions.
Dr Charles Barber
3 comments
3 Responses to “Charles Barber’s disgust”
1. Wilmer Fawcett Says:
April 14th, 2008 at 11:13 am Bravo! My thoughts exactly after receiving such a bland form letter myself. I know many CBC fans are echoing what you’ve eloquently expressed.
2. Robert Murch Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 10:23 am ‘You have yet to realize that your actions will cost you your jobs.’ Unfortunately, such executives are organisms that live in an eco-system where they periodically lose their jobs only to find appointment in the next one. Stursburg and McGuire will eventually move on with their careers never fully comprehending (or caring about) the enormous damage they have done.
3. Gene Ramsbottom Says:
April 20th, 2008 at 10:28 pm Ah, but it is already known as the Steinmetz Legacy so arts administrators and students of arts business administration everywhere will learn and analyse the shenanigans of the Steinmetz/ Stursberg/McGuire manipulation of more CBC resources towards the Songwriters Association of Canada and SOCAN royalty payments for copyrighted creative material. (See the excellent and revealing article by lawyer Howard Knopf on the matter of “CBC, Copyright and the Canadian Cultural Revolution”.) For someone like Mr. Steinmetz (Jr.) pleading a bad case of financial restriction as enough reason to exterminate a national cultural treasure, the ads in the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun have already consumed a third of the CBC Radio Orchestra’s budget. A few more ads will negate the imputed savings and then what will they cut to afford the spin to assure only themselves that they are right? The weakness of radio is the “off” button. Its just too easy to use.
===
04/14/08
Morley Walker in Wpg. Free Press
Filed under: Other internet resources, In the Press
Posted by: morlock [at] 11:08 pm
http://tinyurl.com/5trk87
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/columnists/m_walker/story/4159528p-4746422c.html
Morley Walker’s article talks about the rally for CBC in Winnipeg, and points out that listenership has dropped from 3.7 % to 2.3 % since CBC’s recent changes to their programming took effect.
2 comments
2 Responses to “Morley Walker in Wpg. Free Press”
1. EmilyG Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 9:13 am Why am I not surprised…
2. Robert Murch Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 10:43 am “They’re dead German guys,” Carrabr © said. “Buy a CD, listen on the Internet.” This from the host of one of the new Radio 2 programs, Patrick Carrabr ©, regarding the old format! What an incredibly dismissive and insulting statement. I suppose that the copyright on his name indicates that his carefully crafted opinions require legal protection.
El Sistema: Classical music saving children
Filed under: Open Letters, Stuff to watch, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:39 pm
CBS 60 Minutes Special.
http://standonguardforcbcradio.earsay.com/Through%20a%20system%20of%20early%20training%20and%20local%20orchestras,%20Venezuela%20has%20not%20only%20provided%20an%20uplifting%20musical%20experience%20for%20its%20at-risk%20youth,%20but%20also%20developed%20an%20orchestra%20that%20is%20world%20famous.%20Bob%20Simon%20reports.%20%7C%20
El Sistema youth orchestra and music classes to bring kids hope in their poverty. Venezuela
Through a system of early training and local
orchestras, Venezuela has not only provided an uplifting musical
experience for its at-risk youth, but also developed an orchestra that
is world famous. Bob Simon reports in this CBS “60 Minutes” program that aired on April 14. If you can’t see the show right away, scroll down or search for “El Sistema.”
Check out these statistics:
This program has:
300,000 kids in the system
176 orchestras for children
216 orchestras for young people
400 ensembles and choirs
800,000 children have passed through the system in 32 years.
“Kids who are poor would not be able to join an orchestra on their own.” – one of the participants.
Their National Youth Orchestra is conducted by superstar Gustavo Dudamel, who was a product of the system.
And poor little Canada can’t afford 2 cents for a Radio Orchestra?
1 comments
1 Response to El Sistema: Classical music saving children
Geoff Radnor,Ottawa says
E-mail : geoffradnor[at]rogers.com
Guardian on-line has an article on what is happening in the UK with the great initiative of Julian Lloyd Webber and 10,000 schools in Britain trying to get musical instuments into schools.
Give us back our CBC Radio Orchestra
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 9:30 am
Give us back our CBC Radio Orchestrax
The
official reason is that — at two cents per Canadian — it’s too
expensive. An observer might think the move has more to do with the
dumbing down at CBC Radio 2
Janet Danielson
Vancouver Sun
Monday, April 14, 2008
It is not altogether clear who is served by the CBC’s recent decision to scrap its Radio Orchestra.
The
official reason is that it is too expensive. The CBC’s government
support is now down to 1970’s levels, less than half the average per
capita national radio funding of the top 18 OECD countries.
The
only lower-funded national radio (excluding U.S.A.’s NPR) is that of
New Zealand, which in 1989 made the clever move of turning its radio
orchestra into a Crown corporation. It costs roughly $600,000 a year to
keep the CBC Radio Orchestra running, which is 0.0035 per cent of the
total CBC budget and 0.3 per cent of the Radio Canada budget. Out of
the annual $50 per capita cost of the CBC, this amounts to two cents
per Canadian.
A high per-concert cost has also been cited.
Musicians’ fees for the CBC Radio Orchestra are $400,000 for eight
concerts per year. Yet a CBC Radio Orchestra concert averages 78 per
cent of the cost of a National Arts Centre Orchestra concert, despite
the many new works that the CBC Radio Orchestra performs.
Premiere
performances require expertise and more rehearsal time. The CBC Radio
Orchestra specializes in Canadian music; the National Arts Centre
Orchestra repertoire is directed less towards fostering Canadian
culture and more towards bringing world-class artists to perform in the
national capital. Thus there is little overlap between the two
orchestras.
Furthermore, the CBC Radio Orchestra’s unique role in
commissioning and performing Canadian music is not easily transferred
to city and community orchestras whose obligations to their own local
audiences must take priority over national concerns.
Radio 2 is
also claiming better to reflect the people and music of Canada by
presenting a broader range of genres. The scrapping of the CBC Radio
Orchestra will enable it to direct funds towards this broader range of
genres. The original mandate of the CBC to “inform, enlighten and
entertain” does not, according to the CBC 2005 Arts & Culture
Survey, reflect the “new reality.”
Classical music, we are told,
is one genre among many, and the paternalism of the Massey and Fowler
commissions which shaped the CBC in the 1950s has become odious. The
exclusively European roots of classical music, and its association with
colonialism and elitism, make it less and less relevant to the changing
Canadian scene.
Claims of beauty, profundity or originality are
dismissed as mere window-dressing by an elite bent on retaining
cultural dominance.
But in 2008, what social group constitutes Canada’s elite?
Its
cultural workers, earning on average $13,000 a year from their art?
Recent immigrants, whose children are flooding into conservatories,
music festivals, and youth orchestras?
Concertgoers, who pay far
less for concert tickets than hockey fans pay to watch a game? The
elderly who were promised CBC Radio 2 as a university in their own
homes and are now disappointed?
And what about the majority of
Radio 2 listeners, who, according to the CBC’s own 2005 survey, asked
for less of today’s popular music and the same or more classical music?
Have we really reached the point where to voice a preference for classical music is to disenfranchise oneself?
Then
there is the question of genre. The CBC website breezily assures us,
“we’ll be drawing from a broader, richer and diverse spectrum of music:
classical, jazz, folk, world, R & B, singer-songwriter and roots.”
Breaking down music into categories of genre is not as clear-cut and fair-minded as it might seem.
Why
have “classical” as a single genre — why not Renaissance polyphony,
19th century art song, French baroque opera, serial music, and
minimalism, just to name a few?
By any measure, these “genres”
are much more sonically distinct from each other than are, say,
singer-songwriter and folk. But composer/performer music is now jammed
into a shrinking “classical” pigeonhole in CBC programming.
It can be further argued that without “classical” music, none of the other genres CBC is proposing for Radio 2 would exist.
The
harmonies undergirding all current forms of popular music derive from
classical chord progressions painstakingly worked out over centuries.
It’s a strange kind of thinking that prunes the trunk to make more
space for the branches.
The axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra may
be best read as an act of iconoclasm. Canadian listeners feel betrayed,
especially when they see how enthusiastically the real elites — the
huge multinational music companies — support the changes at Radio 2.
The CBC Radio Orchestra gave Canadians more than their two cents’ worth, and we want it back.
Janet Danielson of Burnaby is the newsletter editor of the Canadian League of Composers.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
comments (0)
Frank Levin: CBC is non-commercial
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:11 am
CBC Management is wrong in believing their programming needs to reflect the musical tastes of all Canadians. The commercial stations already do an excellent job of catering to the various popular music tastes of the majority of Canadians, and the CBC has neither the money nor expertise to even remotely compete with them in these areas, nor is there any need for them to do so.
CBC should continue to do what it has done in the past and done best, to strive to present music and programming to niche markets underserved by commercial stations. Such markets include, but are not limited to the Classical Music and Jazz audiences.
Frank Levin
Vancouver BC
comments (0)
===
04/15/08
CBC President Hubert Lacroix attempts to explain
Filed under: Open Letters, SPIN
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:52 pm
Here is a letter received by Hodie Kahn who wrote to the President and CEO of the CBC, M. Hubert T. LaCroix. I reprint it here in its entirety and I encourage readers to analyze and comment on this letter. The letter to which M. Lacroix responds is posted here.
From: CBC/Radio-Canada Liaison
Date: Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 8:52 AM
Subject: CBC Radio 2
To: CBC/Radio-Canada Liaison
I wish to thank you for your recent e-mail concerning changes to CBC
Radio 2.
It may interest you to know that CBC Radio 2 does not have a large
audience in Canada, which is, of course, a concern to us. In fact,
according to the latest BBM survey, only 3.1 per cent of Canadians who
listen to radio tune in to this network. To understand why, we
conducted the most comprehensive research with Canadians in our history
and learned that respondents did not think that their taste in music,
cultural roots or region of country were represented in Radio 2
programming. In order to rectify this, CBC Radio began a redevelopment
initiative, with the goal of making the network more relevant to more
Canadians while maintaining our strong commitment to classical music.
To this end, in the past year, CBC Radio 2 has launched a number of new
programs that highlight the great breadth of music-making in Canada
today. We have created programs like The Signal to showcase
contemporary music, Tonic to highlight Canada’s love of jazz, and
Canada Live, which broadcasts nationally concerts recorded throughout,
and reflecting, Canada’s different regions and diversity. We have
confirmed our commitment to classical music through the creation of
Sunday Afternoon in Concert and the ongoing support of Saturday
Afternoon at the Opera. We have created the music documentary program,
Inside the Music, to explore the art of creating music. And, in
September 2008, CBC Radio 2 will introduce a new, weekday five-hour
classical program, running from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
CBC Radio will also soon launch three new hosted 24-hours-a-day Web
radio services. Radio 4 will exclusively offer classical music, Radio 5
jazz and Radio 6 adult singer-songwriters. Our preference would be to
have a full FM network for each genre, but that is not feasible. These
new online services will complement CBC Radio 2’s current, very
popular online Concerts on Demand (www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/) and its
podcasts (www.cbc.ca/podcasts.html). In other words, CBC Radio 2 will
remain a unique source of high-quality music for Canadians.
CBC Radio 2 is now and will remain a music network for adult Canadians.
Our values of thoughtfulness in presentation and excellence in
performance will remain intact. The kind of listening experience will
not change; the music highlights will just come from a broader
spectrum.
We remain very committed to fulfilling our mandate which is to reflect
the diverse regions, people and music of this country with high-quality
programming. Please be assured that we always aim to better serve all
of our audience members.
Your comments have been forwarded to the Executive Director of CBC
Radio
for her information and consideration. I do hope you will continue to
listen to CBC Radio 2.
Again, thank you for taking the time to write.
Sincerely,
Hubert T. Lacroix
President and CEO
1 comment
One Response to “CBC President Hubert Lacroix attempts to explain”
1. Oldrich Hungr Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 10:39 pm Quality music? My Behind! Just now I turned on Radio 2 (Canada Live), just to try. Of course, some female was whining: “you are saacred to mee….” I resisted the urge to kick the radio and shut it off as soon as was possible. Unless you are nuts about jazz and poor quality pop, this stuff is unlistenable. FIRE those who created these new programs on Radio 2!!!
Listeners react
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:35 pm
Please do not let us down. Leave the daily classic programs alone.
Faith Vardon
St. Thomas, Ontario
comments (0)
Howard Knopf on the real reason for cutting at CBC Radio
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 2:03 pm
Howard Knopf reveals the real reason to cut the CBC Radio Orchestra: the New CBC needs money to pay royalties to all those pop stars. Read the complete blog entry here.
comments (0)
===
04/16/08
CBC’s digital distribution agreement as analyzed by Money.cnn
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 4:12 pm
The CBC has announced an agreement with Dittybase Technologies http://www.dittybasetechnologies.com/ of Victoria to distribute the entire 70 years’ catalogue of CBC Records digitally. One wonders if the performers and composers who signed agreements with CBC when these recordings were made will see any residuals? CNN Money.com has reprinted the press release http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0387208.htm from Dittybase and made an analysis.
comments (0)
John Oliver responds to CBC President’s form letter
Filed under: Open Letters, SPIN
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:52 am
The CBC is responding to the outrage of its listeners by sending them form letters. Here is my answer to one such letter from CBC President and CEO Hubert T. LaCroix.
LACROIX: “I wish to thank you for your recent e-mail concerning changes to CBC
Radio 2. It may interest you to know that CBC Radio 2 does not have a large
audience in Canada, which is, of course, a concern to us. In fact,
according to the latest BBM survey, only 3.1 per cent of Canadians who
listen to radio tune in to this network.”
What was the impact on your conclusions of the fact that listenership in Vancouver is higher than Toronto and Montreal combined?
LACROIX: “respondents did not think that their taste in music,
cultural roots or region of country were represented in Radio 2
programming. In order to rectify this, CBC Radio began a redevelopment
initiative, with the goal of making the network more relevant to more
Canadians while maintaining our strong commitment to classical music.”
First of all, reducing by more than 50% the presence of so-called “classical music” on Radio 2 can hardly be described as “maintaining a strong commitment.” Art music culture and its context have been gutted.
Secondly, It is not CBC’s mandate to represent the taste of all Canadians on CBC Radio 2. A large segment of the population may never listen to Radio 2, but they are served by commercial radio. Not everyone visits an art gallery. If people say they don’t want their tax dollars spent on art galleries, should we shut them down? If a majority of Canadians don’t see why we need universities, should we stop funding them?
LACROIX: “We have created programs like The Signal to showcase
contemporary music,”
Mixing folk songs with New Music (to cite one example) does not showcase either. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
LACROIX: “Tonic to highlight Canada’s love of jazz, “
Where do I turn to to hear the next Cecil Taylor? Not this program.
LACROIX: “and Canada Live, which broadcasts nationally concerts recorded throughout,
and reflecting, Canada’s different regions and diversity.”
This is certainly a good idea. CBC has always done this. This is not new.
LACROIX: “We have confirmed our commitment to classical music through the creation of
Sunday Afternoon in Concert and the ongoing support of Saturday
Afternoon at the Opera.”
Replacing one classical show on Sunday with another and keeping the opera confirms that you haven’t cut them. Will we have knowledgeable hosts for these shows? Mark Steinmetz has declared that the new CBC does not want to be “talking down to the listener.” So in this new CBC, we will have nothing to learn, nothing to aspire to as a people, no more educated hosts revealing wonderful things about what we are about to hear. Because education, apparently, is “talking down.”
LACROIX: “We have created the music documentary program,
Inside the Music, to explore the art of creating music.”
Excuse me for cynicism, but this will surely feature an abundance of commercial “singer/songwriters” who’ve appeared in the full page ads, and rarely, if ever, the composer/performer.
LACROIX: “And, in September 2008, CBC Radio 2 will introduce a new, weekday five-hour
classical program, running from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.”
That’s right Canada. No working person or children in school will ever hear classical music on the radio again, unless they live in Toronto where they can listen to Znaimer’s station, which plays light classics. (Oh, but see below, CBC is not for kids anyway!)
LACROIX: “CBC Radio will also soon launch three new hosted 24-hours-a-day Web
radio services. Radio 4 will exclusively offer classical music, Radio 5
jazz and Radio 6 adult singer-songwriters. Our preference would be to
have a full FM network for each genre, but that is not feasible. These
new online services will complement CBC Radio 2’s current, very
popular online Concerts on Demand (www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/) and its
podcasts (www.cbc.ca/podcasts.html). In other words, CBC Radio 2 will
remain a unique source of high-quality music for Canadians.”
I applaud initiatives to use every broadcast medium available. The history of the world is the history of change. The world has been changed by the greatest minds. Will Radio 4 play light classics and attempt to compete in the marketplace with Znaimer’s station (since market share is the focus of M. LaCroix’s letter). Will Radio 5 play smooth jazz, dinner jazz, to compete in that marketplace? Will Radio 6 try to compete in the “adult contemporary” category?
LACROIX: “CBC Radio 2 is now and will remain a music network for adult Canadians.”
The great strength of the CBC Radio Two and CBC Stereo networks that preceded this rebranded “Radio2″ lay in the fact that classical music was at the core of its mandate and is a revelation to the soul, regardless of age. I started listening to CBC-FM after I discovered the music of J.S. Bach by playing it as an 11-year old guitarist. I continued to listen to CBC-FM as a kid, teenager, and young adult. This promise that CBC Radio2 will only serve “adult Canadians” is strange in the light of the CBC’s stated intension to be less elitist.
LACROIX: “Our values of thoughtfulness in presentation and excellence in
performance will remain intact.”
This is patently untrue. Your hosts are being instructed to create what your mangement refers to as “blended programming” in an attempt to ape the internet/MP3 player experience. Radio is a linear format. The music you broadcast was conceived of by their creators with specific intentions in mind. If you were thoughtul, your radio programs would have the effect of accentuating the qualities of each piece of music that you broadcast. Instead, you try to ape channel switching.
LACROIX: “The kind of listening experience will
not change; the music highlights will just come from a broader
spectrum.”
If you continue to present the listener with a dog’s breakfast from an ever-increasing pool of “genres” it can only get worse.
Your policy seems to be based on a pop-pscyhoclogy faddy conception of chaos. Your programming should reflect the best research into the human condition, into human perception, and into social cohesion and cultural relevance within the context of a non-commercial public broadcaster. Instead your corporation spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertizing campaigns to try to convince the Canadian public that their money is being well spent to “represent them” when in fact these ads mislead the public into believing that music is separated into competing genres. Divide and conquer.
LACROIX: “We remain very committed to fulfilling our mandate which is to reflect
the diverse regions, people and music of this country with high-quality
programming. Please be assured that we always aim to better serve all
of our audience members.”
I do not want your assurance M. Lacroix, I want to know who you interviewed to come up with the conclusion that you need to gut the arts and culture mandate of the CBC and transform it into a commercial radio service. You say “better serve all of our audience members.” Did you survey “a cross-section of Canadians” rather than CBC listeners? What you should do is listen to us, your listeners. We can tell you how to get a bigger audience: give the people of Canada a unique service that features the music of the world from all periods and nations, rather than a service that features mostly recorded music since 1960. Broaden your perspective on what “classical music” means to include the challenging music that has been written by Canadian composers.
The current CBC management doesn’t care about Canadian culture in its entirety and its expression through a public broadcaster: they care about market share. They’ve made little effort to understand the concerns of their core audience and the many young musicians, artists, painters, writers, composers whose culture they are burying. Instead they send form letters like this one from M. LaCroix that reiterate their spin. They are mandated as a non-commercial service, yet their concerns are aligned with private broadcasters.
John Oliver
4 comments
4 Responses to “John Oliver responds to CBC President’s form letter”
1. EmilyGray Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 2:08 pm I remember that about 5 years ago, there WAS a 5-hour daily classical music program. It was called “Take Five.” And it wasn’t the only classical music program. Hey, I started listening to the CBC when I was 13!
2. Allison Sloan Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 2:11 pm Terrific rebuttal,John!Thank you!
3. Barbara Scales Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 5:50 pm Hi JOhn and all, I am interested to know whether the internet services will also be developing programming with live concerts and ensembles and orchestras with artists and artist/production staff and commissioning new works of composers, jazz or singer/songwriters. And how much of the budget will be available for commissioning new works? How much will be ear marked for various genres? And will it take into consideration the relative complexity of writing with compositional elements of “classical-contemporary” style and the multiple voices that they may involve as well as the copying costs of multi-part works? Barbara
4. Brent Straughan Says:
April 17th, 2008 at 3:11 am Hacking up the CBC Radio orchestra and replacing intelligent music and commentary with juke box junk will be the brutal legacy of the CBC’s current “Gang of 4″. It will take many hands to turn back this wheel but unless we strive to do it, “the unbearable lightness of CBCing” will become a brutal reality. At this point a class action suit for acute mental distress at least, is in order!
The Truth about Music
Filed under: Other internet resources
Posted by: morlock [at] 1:51 am
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4973/
An interesting article from Spiked…
comments (0)
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04/17/08
CBC names interim chief of English Radio
Filed under: Open Letters, In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:49 pm
GUY DIXON
From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
April 17, 2008 at 4:24 AM EDT
Toronto — CBC top brass have announced a new interim executive director for English Radio. Susan Mitton, regional director of the Maritimes, will replace Jennifer McGuire as the search continues for a permanent executive director of radio. The job is the No. 2 position in radio under Richard Stursberg, who heads all English services.
McGuire had been moonlighting in the position at CBC Radio, while also assuming her new role at CBC News as executive director of programming there and deputy head of news. Mitton will begin in the interim position on May 5.
The announcement comes at a time when programming changes toward non-classical music at Radio 2, including more changes due this fall, have created an uproar among some listeners.
BIOGRAPHY OF SUSAN MITTON
Susan Mitton was appointed Regional Director of Radio for CBC Radio for the Maritimes in 1997. As such, she is responsible staff and programming in six Maritime locations – Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton, Charlottetown, Sydney and Halifax. Mitton joined the Corporation in 1973 as a host and researcher for CBC Television in Charlottetown. In subsequent years she held positions as host or producer for Studio 13, A Way Out, and MacIntyre File. For many years, she was Executive Producer of the award winning documentary series, Land & Sea. In 1992, she moved over to CBC Radio as Executive Producer, News and Current Affairs, in Halifax. In 1993, she was appointed Director of Radio for Nova Scotia. This role was expanded to incorporate all of the Maritimes in 1997. During this time, Mitton was instrumental in devising a program review system for regional programming, and she was part of a national task force that helped develop the current CBC Radio schedules. In 1999 – 2001 she was seconded to the role of Program Director for CBC Radio nationally. She has also done Leadership training within CBC for many years. She is married to Ron Mitton and has two children, Julia and John. Mitton is a graduate of Acadia University, BA ‘72. She was one of the founders of Halifax Dance and has retained an active interest in dance and other arts organizations in the Maritimes.
1 comment
One Response to “CBC names interim chief of English Radio”
1. Geoff Radnor,Ottawa Says:
April 18th, 2008 at 4:39 pm Well I just sent Jennifer McGuire a four page letter about how I feel about the changes to Radio 2, do you think I might get a reply? Do you think that Susan Mitton will get to read my letter, Is it Stursberg who is calling the shots on this issue? Or is it Steinmetz?
Int’l Alliance for Women in Music
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:00 pm
Open Letter to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
We of the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) are deeply distressed to learn that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has proposed drastic cuts in classical music programming on CBC2. Current CBC2 programming provides critical opportunities for composers and performers of classical music, as well as for listeners around the world.
Since 2004, the IAWM’s Advocacy Committee has maintained a list of radio stations (at http://www.iawm.org/radioRequests.htm) whose programmers are inclined to broadcast recordings of music composed by women. That CBC2 programs made the list indicates the breadth of those programs; their hosts have been willing to air the works of living composers and music outside the usual canon of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
We cannot urge you strongly enough to reconsider your decision to discontinue these very programs. Nor could we imagine a better cultural ambassador for Canada than CBC2.
Please see that the excellent classical music on CBC2 is allowed to continue.
Respectfully submitted,
Anne Kilstofte
President
International Alliance for Women in Music
comments (0)
Gene Ramsbottom’s Open Letter
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 10:27 am
An open letter by Gene Ramsbottom, principal clarinet for the CBC Radio Orchestra.
gene.jpgThe
CBC Radio Orchestra had flourished for 67 years as a studio broadcast
recording orchestra, with occasional public concerts and important
tours of Canada’s far North. Radio broadcasting provides a viable
alternative to transporting an orchestra around this vast country. CBC
Radio reaches every community in Canada, whereas moving an orchestra
around by float plane would be absurdly expensive.
Over the past thirty years, CBC Radio’s overseas service has
coordinated live-to-satellite orchestra broadcasts in simulcast events
to 36 or 38 countries. Canadian composing and performing talent has
been fostered through CBC’s many broadcast programmes, festivals and
competitions. The CBC Radio Orchestra is internationally renowned for
its innovative programming and devoted listener base – statistics that
don’t show up in Canada-only surveys.
Only three years ago, the current CBC administration obliged the
orchestra to move from its less expensive studio broadcast environment
to the public stage. Costs of theatre rental, ticket sales, promotions,
flyers, programmes, and higher artists’ airplay fees, together with a
restrictive no-fundraising policy, resulted in an operating deficit.
At the same time, new internet-broadcast fees and royalties added to
the CBC’s financial woes. Management responded by declaring the
orchestra too expensive to sustain.
Lost in the corporate spin was the fact that it was far cheaper to
feature the orchestra from the CBC Vancouver Studio One broadcasting
facility. Rather than return the orchestra to its former studio
broadcast business model, management succumbed to another outside
agenda – that of independent producers. The $50,000 Globe and Mail ad a
few weeks ago showed the wholehearted endorsement of the international
music industry, which stands to benefit in the short term from the
changing agenda of the CBC executives responsible for axing the CBC
RAdio Orchestra.
Sadly, by September, the devolution of CBC Radio Two programming
will probably end up in a catastrophic loss of audience, culminating in
a nationwide listener boycott. CBC Radio Two will have become just
another pop-jazz, blues, world-fusion-roots, light accessible classics
forgettable music station. The damage will take years to unravel, as
the CBC’s core audience becomes lost to commercial stations, ipods and
CDs. True, the “concerts-on-demand” proposed by the CBC executives are
an interesting delicatessan salad-bar approach to allowing audiences to
make their own listening choices. But so is putting on earphones and
dialing one’s ipod selections.
Many other countries are proud of their national radio orchestras.
Canada, however, is joining the United States in not having one.
Consider how many performers’ voices will be silenced as a result of
the commercial music industry’s lobbying. The loss of the CBC Radio
Orchestra strips away a piece of Canada’s national heritage. This is
cultural bullying, cultural vandalism, cultural terrorism. What of the
investment, across so many decades, of the funds and energies of so
many groups of people? The Canada Council, provincial and local arts
councils, national, provincial and local music festivals and
competitions, public and private scholarships, estate gifts, bursaries
to universities and colleges, and countless others have helped build
the multi-faceted infrastructure necessary to to foster the “non-vogue”
musical art forms, which have been focused through the artistic prism
of the national radio orchestra. A huge part of Canada’s heritage will
be demolished by the smashing of this cultural jewel, and the
fundamental nature of Canada’s public broadcaster transformed into a
confederation of independent regional productions.
Try to imagine the Roman Catholic Church eliminating the office of a
central figure, such as the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) as “too expensive
to susatin.” Imagine the Church deliberately eliminating its central
representative, its focusing spiritual force. This is not so different
from what the CBC executives have decided to do.
Becoming a CBC-commissioned composer or guest soloist or conductor
featured with the CBC Radio Orchestra requires running a complex
selection gauntlet. Those selected are adjudged the best the country
has to offer. Many young composers and performers launched by the CBC
Radio Orchestra have gone on to illustrious careers. Generations of
children have been introduced or exposed to CBC Radio’s classical
programming before and after school. To elide that a five-hour, mid-day
segment of classical music now constitutes sufficient programming
severely delimits the next generation’s interest in and knowledge of
the “non-vogue” art forms. Symphony managers across the country should
take notice – their jobs, for the next twenty years or more, are about
to become far more difficult.
If the same triumvirate of CBC executives got hold of the funding
reins of the symphonies across Canada, they would no doubt soon argue
that it was too expensive to sustain 30 various-sized orchestras, and
that federal and provincial funding would best be concentrated in one
orchestra, most likely based in Toronto. Through a series of regional
programming initiatives coordinated by the cabal, that singular
symphony would be able to serve the entire country. Just as the CBC
budget inexorably shrinks by a million dollars each year, the budget
for that single symphony would also contract. The cabal’s cost-benefit
analysis would further reduce this fictional Toronto National
Orchestra, to avoid obvious redundancies in manpower. Too soon, that
fictional Torontonian orchestra would go the way of television shows
and commercials, its strings sections reduced to a stack of
synthesisers. Those executives would readily concur, after another
budget cut, that the whole orchestra could be rendered by synthesisers,
and that a sole cultural performance resource could be operated, like
the CBC’s digital radio service, out of a single, computer-filled room.
There would be no need for concert halls, so the real estate could be
sold to developers. The perfect music would come from the CBC’s
synthesiser orchestra. Virtual orchestras are already a reality. The
executives would win big bonuses for meeting the country’s diverse
musical cultural needs with an ever-diminishing budget. Unexpected
windfalls could be had as zealous administrators realized that
university music schools, conservatories, and public/private school
music education programmes were unnecessary. There would be no point in
a career in music in Canada. The one job, the only job left in a
once struggling industry would be that of a lone soul running the
computers and synthesisers in the CBC’s basement.
And so would end the Music of the Brave New Night.
Yours truly,
Gene Ramsbottom,
former Arts Commissioner for Music,
North Shore Arts Commission
principal clarinet,
CBC Radio Orchestra
member (1974-2008)
producer, co-sponsor,
Out For Lunch noonhour concert series
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04/18/08
Tim Brady: “I hope we can get this resource back.”
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:42 pm
This piece appeared in the Georgia Straight on April 17, discussing Tim Brady’s reworking of the Guess Who on the CBC Radio Orchestra’s April 20th concert.
At the end of the article, Brady and his singer discuss the shut down of the CBCRO:
“Although they’re happy with their work, both Brady and Onukwulu are
dismayed by the CBC’s recent, and controversial, decision to disband
the CBC Radio Orchestra.
“You can tell that they’re really
trying to push for programs that would be considered hip, but they have
no idea,” Onukwulu says. “And I think that an orchestra is just as hip
as any pop rock or indie rock or any of that stuff.”
Brady
concurs, but remains optimistic about the CBC’s commitment to
contemporary music—and about the upcoming concert. “I keep hoping that
somehow we can get this resource back,” he says.”
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Page One story of UK’s “Gig” magazine
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 9:20 pm
This story was page one of the current issue of GIG Magazine from teh UK.
News
10 04 2008
Photo: © Oliver Clarke
CBC abolishes radio orchestra
North America’s last such ensemble at an end
By Tony Pinkham
Opposition is growing to a decision by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to revamp its classical music programming and shut down its radio orchestra.
Since the public broadcaster announced a revised schedule in March, listeners of CBC Radio 2 – the country’s specialist classical music and jazz network – have registered their disapproval on the company’s website and via an online petition. A separate Facebook group, Save Classical Music at the CBC, has also attracted more than 5,000 members. Now, an announcement that the Vancouver-based Canadian Radio Orchestra (CRO) – the only ensemble of its kind in the Americas – is to close from November has fuelled the controversy.
The decision, insisted CBC spokesman Jeff Keay, was a matter of economics. ‘We couldn’t afford to maintain the orchestra,’ Keay told the Globe and Mail. ‘The orchestra was currently doing eight concerts a year and, for the money we’re spending, we can’t afford to do that.’
CBC pledged to commission new works from orchestras across Canada from 2009, using the money saved from disbanding the 45-member CRO.
But in a 1 April open letter to his musicians, colleagues and ‘music lovers across the country’, CBC principal conductor Alain Trudel (above) said he was ‘devastated by the loss of our mandate from the CBC’, adding that ‘we need to grasp what [the orchestra] stands for and its place in our cultural life’.
‘Being the only radio orchestra in the Americas, the CRO is the one music ensemble that sets the Canadian music scene apart,’ Trudel added. ‘By its existence, its mission and its work, it helps define Canada’s uniqueness.
‘Throughout my tenure, I have insisted that we develop projects from all musical genres, including jazz, world, pop and Canadian native music,’ Trudel continued. ‘The CRO has developed creative projects around music from Asia and the Middle East; around jazz improvisers as well as traditional orchestral repertoire as well as collaborating with the rapper K-os. During the last season, we commissioned 18 works over seven concerts. Through the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is not only seen as a programmer but also as an active partner in Canadian art-making.
‘The CRO, through the elegance of a national broadcasting network, has reached people across our country. We have received invitations from large and small communities across Canada and even from major concert halls in Europe. All of this, alas, we are now unable to entertain. However, the role of the orchestra in building bridges across our country is something we must never forget.’
link Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
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William Neville, April 18
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 9:10 pm
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you
William Neville
Updated: April 18 at 02:00 AM CDT
The protest outside the CBC building last Friday, through which a number of CBC listeners expressed their opposition to recent and pending changes in Radio 2, probably changed no minds inside the building. But since the real decision-making authority in the CBC is to be found elsewhere, there was surely no expectation that the protesters would bring the walls tumbling down. Nonetheless, the presence of some senior CBC personnel mingling with the protesters provided the former an opportunity to make some points.
Attention was drawn to the technological revolution’s impact on conventional ways of thinking about radio and broadcasting generally. In particular, the argument ran, Internet and satellite transmissions are already offering more — in terms of classical music, for example — than most conventional broadcasting systems could ever now hope to offer, a shift that can only intensify with time. It is a compelling point, but it cuts both ways: New communications systems are presumably just as capable of delivering jazz, folk, world, R B and roots music as they are classical music, yet it is CBC’s classical music listeners that are effectively being told to shove off and get with these alternative music sources. A second, less explicit point was the suggestion that, ultimately, the recent and pending changes will create an audience base that is both larger and more diverse. For the CBC, always susceptible to the political argument that it serves a small and narrow audience, the idea of diversifying and enlarging the audience is naturally tantalizing.
However, one danger, pointed out here last week, is that the new audiences the CBC hopes to entice — if they come at all — are unlikely to come with any sense of loyalty to the CBC as a national institution and public service. The other danger, of course, is that it won’t work — that the new listeners will fail to replace the old listeners who will abandon the CBC. On that point, the early returns are interesting.A survey, conducted between Jan. 7 and March 2, and published just last week, shows Radio 2’s share of the Winnipeg radio listening audience, having declined from an already low 3.7 per cent in 2007, to 2.4 per cent in 2008. That represents one-third fewer listeners than a year ago.
This is not conclusive (there being other factors that could be at play) but it is certainly suggestive. By January and February this year, the first round of new programming had settled in and audiences could react to them. CBC management point out that many new programmes take a while to “settle in” and to find an audience. Fair enough, but the numbers were not remaining constant while the new programs were settling in. Indeed, substantially more listeners were checking out than signing on. To this point, any transfusion of new listeners appears to be more than offset by the hemorrhaging of the old.
With the next new round of changes scheduled to begin in September, this means that the CBC will be having to run faster and faster just to stand still. We must all hope that the patient survives the surgery.It fell to Patrick Carrabre, a Brandon-based composer and host of one of CBC’s new late evening shows, to articulate a third issue. Carrabre, not surprisingly, wants to see expanded broadcast opportunities for new Canadian music and a de-emphasizing of the works of what he describes as “dead German guys.”
There is irony in Carrabre choosing to play a rather odd nationalist card. Many long-time CBC listeners support the CBC because they are nationalist in the sense of seeing the CBC as a great national institution. It wouldn’t occur to them, however, that Canadian patriotism requires them to dis the likes of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven — indeed, it is the universality of the works of the great composers that explains the fact that tens of millions of people all over the world enjoy their music. The probability, moreover, is that if ever there is an audience for the kind of music Carrabre composes, it is likely to come from the ranks of those who admire the very composers — and the tradition — Carrebre scorns. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
One should nonetheless appreciate Carrabre’s candour, though the CBC may come to feel that his essentially myopic line of argument is not helpful to their case. If he truly believes contemporary music in the classical genre is utterly divorced from a much longer tradition, and that dead composers have no relevance to generations that follow, he should provide in his will that upon his death none of his music shall continue to be played. On the other hand, since Carrabre has a program on CBC Radio 2, that problem might solve itself by CBC deciding, somewhere down the line, that his music, and his choices in other people’s music, are dispensable too. Should that happen and should his current defence of CBC’s new programming fail to save him, one might recall Churchill’s comments on the appeasers: “Everyone feeds the crocodile in the hope that it will eat him last.”
wnwfp[at]mts.net
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Russ Francis strenuously objects
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:27 am
Mr. Hubert T. Lacroix
President and CEO
CBC.
Dear Mr Lacroix:
I strenuously object to the changes at CBC Radio 2.
While I recognize that you are attempting to boost audience numbers, you will certainly lose me and my friends as listeners.
Back when I was a University of Toronto graduate student, I learned much of what I know about classical music from CBC Radio, learning that has substantially enhanced my life.
I gather that you no longer regard such matters as important.
The changes mean that you have lost me and my friends forever. CBC 2 is now gone from my list of preset stations on my receiver.
As well, I resent that my tax dollars are being employed to support what used to be a culturally important service.
Sincerely
Russ Francis
Victoria BC .
3 comments
3 Responses to “Russ Francis strenuously objects”
1. site admin Says:
April 18th, 2008 at 12:33 am Hello Russ Francis, Thank you for forwarding me your letter. I believe that if we keep the pressure up, and especially if we tell our politicians that we don’t approve of them underfunding the CBC to death so that it has to cut everything on the CBC that is dear to us, that we may be able to bring about change. I think it is important to argue in favour of increasing funding to the CBC so that they can fulfill their mandate properly, to be enabled to include the breadth of non-commercial Canadian culture. Those who would like to see an end to public broadcasting, love to hear people write in and say “I resent that my tax dollars are being employed to support [the CBC]”. John
2. Zoltan Roman Says:
April 20th, 2008 at 4:06 pm This is a response as much to the above note from the “site admin” as to the original writer’s letter. I am an Emeritus Professor of musicology, and a onetime member of the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra. Yet I, too, have come to resent every cent of my excessive taxes that is spent on the NEW CBC. The ‘old’ (original?) CBC–rightfully admired and envied the world over–started to go downhill in the early 1970s, and has not stopped since. So the only difference between, say, 10 years ago and now is that ‘our’ (sorry – not mine) doughty ‘public broadcaster’ (no, no, children, I don’t mean NPR!) has now been caught (inevitably? too right) in an avalanche. Throwing more money in its path will NOT save it from reaching rock bottom. The current crop of philistines in charge will not listen, or reverse course – BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO. (And to be absolutely fair [why??], they are no better or worse than their predecessors for decades now. Want proof? Feel free to ask me for my inch-thick file of useless correspondence with the recently departed, useless and thoroughly unlamented President – from a time when I, too, was still naive enough to believe that halting the rot was, maybe, possible….) So let’s wake up, all you lovely, kind, earnest culture lovers – and start to lobby (preferably politically) for the ABOLITION of the CBC. I assure you that if you are only half as nasty as I am, you will simply LOVE seeing the top half dozen or so of the (here pertinent) CBC brass on the breadline!
3. site admin Says:
April 21st, 2008 at 12:24 am Dear Zoltan Roman, I just wanted to thank you for your pithy comment that raises a very interesting issue, one I’ve heard before. I wonder if parliament would ever again allow funding of a public broadcaster proposed by an entirely different group of Canadians? In the current climate, I fear such a new venture would be forced from the outset to engage in “Public-Private-Partnerships.” Are we losing our way as an open democracy? John Oliver (composer and “site admin”)
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04/20/08
Yannick Nézet-Séguin: “not acceptable”
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:37 am
—-
To anyone concerned by the CBC orchestra, and by Culture in Canada…x
—-
When I was a very young conductor from Montreal, at the beginning of my carrer, one institution outside of Quebec was the very first to put some trust in my talent and invite me to conduct a radio programme: the CBC orchestra. This was in June 2001. I had the pleasure to work with these wonderful musicians and to play great music, including some new works from Canadian composers. My relationship with the CBC orchestra became very deep and regular, as I often subsequently visited Vancouver to work again with these friends-musicians and to design fascinating programs for a coast-to-coast audience.
I am still quite young, but my career is now leading me to conduct orchestras everywhere in the world on a regular basis, with sometimes a very long tradition in performing so-called “classical music” (which I prefer to refer to as “concert music”). I am in a privileged position to observe the strengths and challenges in performing that music and making it relevant today in various cultures throughout the world; I am also conducting regularly radio orchestras in Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden….
People often ask me: Is there a Canadian way of doing things in music? And, rather proudly, my answer is always: Yes, there is! And it is about combining an innate sense of discovery and freedom to a genuine respect for our roots and our origins.
I must say that when I heard that the CBC orchestra would be dismantled in a few months, that definition of a Canadian way was suddenly severely damaged. No matter how respectable are the intentions of “looking into the future” and supposedly “becoming more in-tune with the needs of a generation”: It is a basic and essential fact in History that any society has to take good care of its traditions, its roots and its institutions which have been built patiently to protect and to nurture experience and knowledge, in order to be able to look and to grow into the future.
This decision is simply irresponsible, as it is short-sighted and underestimating the unique expertise that this orchestra – musicians, staff, broadcasters – has acquired and cherished for so many years in order to serve all Canadians. It is contrary to a step toward the future, as it is shutting down an essential and privileged window for Canadian talent – instrumentalists, soloists, composers, and conductors like me who are given their first chance to be accepted and nourished in their own country. Shouldn’t we be proud of this, or instead should we merely count it as vulgar revenues and expenses?? It is a savage cut in our collective memory.
That is, purely and simply, not acceptable.
—–
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Music director designate, Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest
Directeur artistique, Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal
Principal guest conductor designate, London Philharmonic Orchestra
nezetseguin[at]mac.com
www.yannicknezetseguin.com
2 comments
2 Responses to “Yannick Nézet-Séguin: “not acceptable””
1. Geoff Radnor,Ottawa Says:
April 20th, 2008 at 5:38 pm Now we are really talking. M Nézet-Séguin post is such an important one I hope that he has let the CEO of CBC and those responsible for the disbanding of the orchestra know how he thinks.
2. Gene Ramsbottom Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm I doubt that the CBC executives bother to read these postings. The “Emperor’s New Clothes” is being acted out at CBC Headquarters. For shame that it should take a child to state the obvious. Perhaps the government would notice if everyone to have received the Order of Canada for cultural development of this country surrendered their pins in protest. Perhaps not.
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04/21/08
Howard Knopf
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 11:17 pm
The Hill Times, April 21st, 2008
CBC’s Radio Two is being run into the ground, writes Howard Knopf
The devastation of CBC Radio Two in the last year by a small cadre of senior and middle managers after decades of distinguished history is a travesty that is becoming a tragedy.
By Howard Knopf
OTTAWA—Never before in Canadian culture has so much damage been done to so many by so few so fast. The devastation of CBC Radio Two in the last year by a small cadre of senior and middle managers after decades of distinguished history is a travesty that is becoming a tragedy.
And it will soon get even worse. If this isn’t decisively reversed now, many children—especially those outside of the big cities—are going to grow up in Canada with virtually no exposure to classical music. Moreover, many older people who continue to pay lots of taxes—and to vote—will arguably be deprived of their right to hear “a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains” as required by the Broadcasting Act.
By fiat of elite CBC management, dead European classical composers will be all but purged from the airwaves. Living serious music composers will be marginalized unless they have broad appeal, like Phillip Glass or Marjan Mozetich. Forget about the more challenging modern masters like Elliott Carter, R. Murray Schaeffer, or Harry Somers. They are no longer important or even relevant in the brave new diverse world of the CBC.
Even the CBC’s own flawed, small-sample survey research that supposedly justified the new “renewal” indicated that 49 per cent of respondents who listened to Radio Two wanted more “classical” music and only 32 per cent wanted less. Likewise, only 35 per cent of respondents wanted more of “today’s popular music” and 56 per cent said they wanted less.
As a result of CBC management’s plan to abandon the “over 50″ audience in its doomed mission to win the hearts, minds, and ears of a younger generation, we’ll soon hear lots of Feist and countless lesser wannabe song writers and performers. We’ll hear “CanCon Old Gold” that is too worn out for commercial radio, such as BTO, Lighthouse and Anne Murray. These will be the new “classics.” We’ll also hear much more “Old Gould,” which is always good for Canadian flag waving. Just what the downtown Toronto music elite establishment wants us to hear because that’s where the money is.
Out with the old elite. In with the new elite, who will include the very successful commercial musicians and record companies who recently signed a very expensive ad in The Globe and Mail, clearly suggesting the answer to the question of “cui bono” (who will really benefit) from all of this.
Speaking of elites, the elite few who are now running Radio Two (into the ground, in my opinion) want us to believe that all music is equal. But it isn’t. Popular music is rarely really “good” music that endures and becomes classical. Much of it is part of the junk and fast food of modern culture.
Pierre Juneau did a great thing for Canadian commercial music with the Canadian content requirements. But let us not gild the lily by turning the CBC into a second rate commercial network. That would not only be contrary to the Broadcasting Act. It simply won’t work because CBC doesn’t have the skills to make it work.
One of the yet unexplored ironies of this sad Canadian version of a cultural revolution is that this exercise in inverse elitism may end up actually costing the CBC a lot of money, despite the stated goals of CBC management to the contrary.
For example, CBC has just killed off the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, the last remaining jewel in a crown that was once acclaimed throughout the world. No less than Igor Stravinsky, the giant of all 20th century serious composers, chose to use the long-gone CBC Symphony Orchestra in Toronto to make some of the most definitive recordings of his own music, including the legendary performance of his Symphony of Psalms that he conducted in 1963. Naturally, in classic Canadian fashion, the orchestra was disbanded the following year.
CBC claims that eliminating its Vancouver radio orchestra will save money. It reportedly cost only about $600,000 a year to run the orchestra. Even CBC brass claim they will save less than a million dollars a year with the cut. Much of that will now likely go to recording and subsidizing commercial music.
Moreover, here is what CBC is not telling us. In dumbing down to five hours a day of “classical” music (in the middle of the day when almost nobody can hear it), CBC will greatly increase its airtime for copyright protected music (music not in the public domain). This means that CBC’s copyright tariff costs will surely increase.
At last report, the CBC was paying almost $1.5 million a year to SOCAN, as of 2005, for its radio activity alone—for the use of repertoire that historically has included a lot of public domain classical music. According to Canada’s Copyright Board, in 1998 the percentage of “protected” music played on CBC radio overall was somewhere between 21 per cent and 24 per cent of its broadcast day. Clearly, this percentage will now rise substantially.
Whatever calculation may have been in place before will likely now change. Someone will probably do some arithmetic on the back of an envelope and suggest that CBC should double or treble or increase even more that amount of $1.5-million a year in view of the fact that the dreaded (dead for more than 50 years) European composers will be taking up very little time now on the CBC’s subsidized radio network. CBC will likely agree rather than offend Canada’s commercial music elites and have to go to the trouble of actually having a hearing at the Copyright Board, which it hasn’t done for a very long time. Such increased payments would be perfectly consistent with CBC’s new policy of pandering to these commercial elites.
So the small saving realized from killing off the last radio orchestra in North America will likely be more than offset by increased SOCAN payments alone. This is not to mention inevitable new demands by NRCC—the record companies’ and performers’ collective that is trying to play catch up, and then some, with SOCAN. NRCC will also greatly benefit from the banishment of old foreign recordings and their replacement with newer Canadian product. Needless to say, most if not all of these extra tariff costs will go to the commercial music interests that CBC will now actively promote and play at taxpayers’ expense.
Even though SOCAN takes in well over $200 million a year, very little of this money goes to serious music composers in Canada. Many of the best known names in Canadian serious music (at least they were well-known up until last year when CBC management cut the much loved and acclaimed “Two New Hours” show) earn barely enough money from SOCAN to cry in their beers, and only a few beers a year at that.
One hears that even very well known “serious” composers in Canada are earning well under $10,000 a year from SOCAN—many less than $100 a year. Much of these meagre amounts come from outside Canada because SOCAN’s distribution rules have greatly hurt serious composers since the merger of CAPAC and PRO into SOCAN in 1990.
This is the way the copyright system works in Canada. It rewards commercial success and has nothing to do with merit or artistic importance. This is not the case in Europe which has “cultural funds” institutionalized in the collective system. Indeed, Europe still has magnificent public radio networks and radio orchestras. The BBC alone has five orchestras and the BBC Singers. There are many great radio orchestras on the continent.
It is true that the world has survived admittedly more drastic cultural revolutions. Even so, what is happening on Front Street at CBC headquarters is still very disturbing.
Moreover, bad as this is, some are cynical enough to see the possibility of an even bleaker future unfolding than is now apparent. This could entail the possibility that, in the longer term, Canadian listeners/taxpayers will become so turned off that they will beg to eliminate or privatize CBC Radio.
Then, in typically Canadian fashion, the government might even end up having to pay an opportunistic party to take over the surely very large liabilities for salaries, severances, and other items that the accountants and lawyers will surely come up with. We could then see a national version of Moses Znaimer’s CFMZ.
Enough said. Whatever happens, Canadian taxpayers will soon end up paying much more for much less. The current disaster in Canada is easily reversible with appropriate changes by, or if necessary, in and to CBC management. This must happen as soon as possible.
By the way, Ben Heppner grew up in Dawson Creek, somewhere in northeastern B.C. He won the CBC Talent Festival (which no longer exists) in 1979. This launched his career. How will the next Ben Heppner develop? He is one of many wonderful CBC stories. There might have been many others. But they won’t be told because they will now never happen.
Howard Knopf is an Ottawa cultural curmudgeon, former CBC recording artist, formerly fervent CBC Radio Two listener, and copyright lawyer.
The Hill Times
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04/22/08
George Zukerman O.,C., O.B.C.
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 1:08 am
The wanton abandonment of the CBC Radio Orchestra, by middle-level executives of the Corporation is a story that simply will not go away. I had the honour to be present among nearly 500 people who raised their collective voice in protest at a demonstration prior to the orchestra’s penultimate concert at the Chan centre on the weekend.
Fifty five years ago, I played in the orchestra , under the direction of a great Canadian musical pioneer, John Avison.. In those days, we recorded 39 studio broadcasts every year, with music by every young Canadian composer who owned a bottle of India ink. They were all unknowns then – Weinzweig, Coulthard, Adaskin, Schaefer. Thanks in large part to the Radio orchestra they emerged as our most distinguished composers of the 20th century.
We also toured with this orchestra 30 years ago, up the coast of B.C. To Bella Coola and Kitimat [which had no road in those days]; over the arctic circle to Inuvik and Frobisher Bay – Iqaluit today. Concertmaster Cam Trowsdale became the world’s first Fiddler on the Roof in Tuktayauktuk.
The Orchestra then – as now – was an iconic symbol of public broadcasting, the clarion voice of classical music to thousands of listeners in smaller cities towns and villages across the land. Through short wave and recordings it proudly represented Canada on the world’s musical stage.
The tours take place no longer. CBC recordings of classical repertoire are a thing of the past despite Grammy awards and world-wide recognition, and now, the orchestra itself is to be destroyed in an act of reckless [and needless] cultural stupidity.
.
We are told that the Orchestra is no longer “economically viable”. The paltry sum needed to run the orchestra amounts to approximately 2c per Canadian. The advertising campaign in which the CBC is trying so desperately to convince us that they are taking the shining new pathway to musical democracy is surely costing as much as the orchestra’s entire annual budget.
There is a prevalent sense that the Orchestra is being dismantled and the programme scheduled gutted, as part of a systematic policy to change the face of Radio 2, to change the music we listen to, to abandon the traditions of 70 years of public broadcasting, to forgo the CBC’s mandate to serve minority communities, to sacrifice intelligent commentary and informed musical opinion, and to ghettoise what little classical music remains to daytime hours when working adults generally cannot listen, and young people are presumably in school.
The CBC has embarked on an unpredictable and dangerous course. In place of music of lasting value, we are to be offered an endless diet of homogenized musical pablum, much of it barely distinguishable from radio fare heard on every private station.
Eric Friesen of “Studio Sparks” [one of the many well-loved classical music programmes due to be scrapped in September] defined classical music as “That music which remains when all else falls away.” If the CBC has its way, it is the world of great classical music that will fall away. In that case, what will remain?
The demonstrators at the Chan, included large numbers of University music students [who says young people aren’t interested in classical music?] At the concert there was a prolonged standing ovation, and a spontaneous a- capella rendition of Oh Canada. Many players and listeners alike were in tears. As the hall emptied, somebody shouted the words that were on everyone’s lips – “Save the CBC Orchestra”….. How better could the allegedly dwindling public show determined support for the Orchestra, for good music and for the shadow of what the CBC once represented?
Sincerely,
George Zukerman, O.,C., O.B.C.
4 comments
4 Responses to “George Zukerman O.,C., O.B.C.”
1. EmilyGray Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:19 pm “The advertising campaign in which the CBC is trying so desperately to convince us that they are taking the shining new pathway to musical democracy is surely costing as much as the orchestra’s entire annual budget.” Wow, that really angers me. Great letter. Though I’m a little surprised that Studio Sparks has been called a “classical” program…
2. Gene Ramsbottom Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm Let’s change this. What if the situation were reversed: what if the CBC executives cancelled most of the “non-classical” (jazz/pops etc.) and added more so-called “classical” programming in addition to the twelve major programmes they cancelled? What would the outcry of protest be then? None. None whatsoever; that genre is being served very well by the commercial radio interests and they do it well, much much better than the CBC announcers who try desperately to be “hip” but would fail to get a job in that part of the industry. The Steinmetz/McGuire legacy will live on in the annals of Arts Administration studies in the textbook chapter “How to Ruin a Public Broadcaster.”
3. Howard White Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:51 pm Good for you George. I agree with everything you say. This action is not only a betrayal of CBC’s mandate, it is suicidal. The pop music audience will never transfer their loyalty to the CBC. Once the management has alienated the CBC Radio’s tradional audience, they will have no audience and we will have no public broadcaster. Some people will of course welcome this.
4. Wilmer Fawcett Says:
April 24th, 2008 at 10:36 am George, what an excellent letter which neatly summarizes the incredible history of this fine orchestra, and what it means to the cultural identity and the artistic face of Canada. When I became a member of the orchestra in the 60s it was still in the wonderful creative phase which you describe, under Jack Avison, and the amount of Canadian-composed music we played and commissioned was something to be very proud of. Since that time the management has seen fit to bit by bit undermine and dismantle the programming of the radio orchestra, ending the commissions, ending the studio broadcasts, ending the recordings, completely emasculating the programming which this orchestra alone was contributing to our Canadian identity. Now the coup-de-grace, the last shameful cut of all. We are outraged and demand the restoration of our orchestra, the restoration of the commissions, the restoration of the recordings, the restorations of the studio broadcasts, the restoration of the ability to work hand in hand with our Canadian composers to present our national talent to the world.
American Federation of Musicians of USA & Canada speaks out
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:46 am
PRESS RELEASE
April 21, 2008
Len Lytwyn, Executive Director for Canada;
American Federation of Musicians
of the United States and Canada
The planned dismantling of the famed CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra,
coupled with the unconscionable reversal of program content of CBC’s
Radio Two, from being a primarily a classical music broadcaster, to what
now appears to be primarily, a middle-of-the-Road/POP Music station, is as
if – CBC dropped the atomic bomb on the serious musician-performers in
this country. It is an unwarranted and decimating attack on the performing
professionals in this musical genre, which will force many of them and the
emerging classical artists to look to other ways and means to financially
support themselves and their families – so much for all those devoted years
of study and practice! This is truly a tragic blow to this segment of the
cultural development in Canada, and one which must be reconsidered by our
publically funded broadcaster!
I most strenuously urge all our Locals, their members, all arts organizations,
and all those individuals throughout Canada, whose soul is touched by
music, to support the campaign to “Save Classical Music at the CBC!”
1 comment
One Response to “American Federation of Musicians of USA & Canada speaks out”
1. Gene Ramsbottom Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm Not just save classical music because if that’s all that was accomplished the Radio Orchestra would NOT be restored. Any new funding would be sucked into general revenues and used for other tv projects. No, the restored CBC Radio Orchestra must have separate unassailable funding of an order that restores it to its former glory as a major defining cultural institution. This could happen if it was declared a national heritage institution. It could still function within the CBC as a recognized subsidiary but have its budget protected from the designs of its executives eager for fresh money to utilize elsewhere in the CBC television/radio production system, if only to pay for the expensive media ads and astonishing royalty payments about to be channeled through SOCAN. Urge all M.P.s to elevate the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver to national heritage status. It has been the longest running radio project in North American broadcast history. That is enough of a probation period and it passed the audition. It is time for tenure not exermination.
Richard Kurth, UBC School of Music
Filed under: Open Letters, Public Speeches
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:45 am
Rally in support of the CBC Radio Orchestra
Plaza of the Chan Centre at UBC
April 20, 2008
Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Richard Kurth, and I am the Director of the School of Music here at UBC. I am very proud that my colleagues and students have declared loud and clear their support for the Radio Orchestra. I am especially pleased that last Friday our students dedicated their last orchestra concert of the year in solidarity with the CBC Radio Orchestra. The Radio Orchestra includes many faculty members and alumni of the UBC School of Music. They are mentors and role models for our students, and their orchestra represents the values and achievements that our students aspire to. The orchestra is also an expression of extraordinary dedication: dedication by each individual to the perfection of their ability as a performing artist; and dedication by the collective to preserving as a living legacy the profound musical utterances of our best composers, past, present, and future. And so I want to begin by saluting the wonderful achievements of the orchestra’s many players, conductors, and producers over its long and noble history.
Think of the amazing seventy-year legacy of this orchestra, and all the musicians who have given their heart, soul, and sweat to build it as a living tradition in our musical culture! Think of their beliefs, aspirations, and achievements, and of all the listeners they have nourished and inspired! In an interview on Radio One on the day he announced the orchestra’s fate, Mr. Steinmetz paid lip service to the wonderful legacy of the orchestra, but that did not stop him or his bosses from abruptly ending that legacy in the crown of its seventieth year. Do we live in a society that jettisons productive citizens when they reach the age of seventy? I certainly hope not. We can be confident, I think, that current management won’t be around that long, but I fear that the institution they are supposed to nurture may not be able to survive in the environment they are cultivating. And I know that their actions are doing enormous damage to an infinitely valuable aspect of our musical life, one built on extraordinarily dedicated efforts of musicians whose devotion to music far exceeds the imagination of the average music consumer.
Through the Radio Orchestra, the CBC was able to participate in the production of new Canadian works, and to create innovative programming that set Canadian music in a wider and longer musical tradition. By disbanding the orchestra, the CBC is cutting off yet another of its creative organs. It is forfeiting its ability, and its responsibility, to lead in the creation of Canadian musical culture, and it seems content merely to be a follower. The great public broadcasters, and even the great commercial ones (such as NBC Radio in the heyday of the Toscanini years), have made their most important, memorable, and acclaimed contributions through their own innovative programming, not through playing recordings that are already available commercially. The true vitality of broadcasting lies in capturing life as it happens, either in breaking news, or in capturing the presence of live performances; it also lies in the production of compelling new shows; but it does not lie in the mundane if lucrative routine of recordings and re-runs. We must not let the CBC devolve into a commercial-free venue for products that are already commercially available. The Radio Orchestra was one of the few means the CBC had to create and shape musical programming that could never happen otherwise. It is a huge aesthetic and cultural mistake to destroy this intangible but infinite creative resource.
CBC management also seems to have a naive, simplistic, and monolithic understanding of demographic trends and music preferences. They seem to be chasing after a demographic that already finds what it wants elsewhere, and in the meantime they are alienating their faithful supporters. But there is further irony. It wouldn’t be saying much to venture that most of us at this rally are younger than the Rolling Stones. We all enjoy and consume popular culture. And we all affirm that sex, drugs, and rock and roll have universal appeal, with each of us getting what we need, perhaps with a little help from our friends. But we don’t believe only in immediate gratification, or in the consumer model of artistic production. Of course we all consume popular culture—it’s unavoidable, and it gives us the index of the Now. But we also care about the Past and the Future. We want to complement popular culture with other kinds of music, especially music that challenges us in additional ways, that isn’t restricted to the three- minute attention span of the three-verse song, that comments more extensively and thoughtfully on society and human experience, that engages the rich history of human culture, and that gives us deeper insight into our aesthetic and moral potential, as individuals and as a society.
We live in a world in which a huge variety of new musical products are continuously available everywhere one turns. But the global market is also rapidly creating a tendency toward a single mode of music consumption. Cultural distinctness and independence is being lost to the hegemony of the “song,” which despite some truly great contributions, is quickly becoming the fast food of music genres. Every world musical tradition is now at risk. Their surface elements are being sold off to the commercial model of the pop song, while the true heritage, which requires deeper dedication to maintain, is being neglected and will whither.
We must nourish and maintain musical cultures that can remain distinctive, that can sustain longer musical compositions, and that can give listeners the stimulation and challenge that they crave. We need music that rewards concentrated involvement and contemplation, and we need to maintain performance traditions that cultivate musical participation, rather than merely the sales of studio recordings and the private isolation of the iPod. The Radio Orchestra was one of the few ways in which our national broadcaster engaged in living musical culture rather than the crude economies of consumption and profit.
Let us also remember that sound cannot travel in a vacuum. The best music of the present, and of the future, will resonate with echoes of the best music of the past. An orchestra such as the CBC Radio Orchestra is an instrument of historical memory and resonance, alive with the music of the past and the present, and ready for the music of the future. The current management at CBC seems to be lacking in just this sort of historical awareness. They may pay lip service to it, but it seems not to interfere with their decisions. To be sure, an inability to learn from history is an endemic problem in our society today. Smug leaders who think themselves above the lessons of history are perpetrating disastrous policies that are destroying societies around the world. Back here at home, CBC management seems not only to disdain the musical achievements of earlier generations, but also to have forgotten that the national broadcaster was founded to build national unity and national culture, and was meant to do so all over the country, not just in the centers of greatest power and influence, which revolve around their own interests, apparently in ignorance or disregard for the rest of the country. It is easy to feel that the decision to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver is another marginalization of western creative energies, and a further consolidation of influence in the centre. We challenge CBC management to prove these fears to be unfounded, by showing us that they will actually invest more in creative musical production on both coasts, and not cut off our resources in favour of their own neighbourhoods.
It’s time for CBC management to reconsider and reverse its decision to disband the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra. Compared to the fat salaries of the executives who want to kill it, not to mention the appalling amounts they have spent on ads meant to counter those of us who believe in the orchestra, the very modest budget of the Radio Orchestra was an amazing value. The Orchestra has made contributions to Canadian musical culture that these bureaucrats will never be able to equal. We won’t be sad when it is their time to go. But we want the Orchestra to live on! Here’s to the fabulous concert they will present this afternoon. Please write to your MP in support of the Orchestra, so that this concert may be the first of many more!
© 2008 Richard Kurth
1 comment
One Response to “Richard Kurth, UBC School of Music”
1. Gene Ramsbottom Says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:09 pm A marvelous speech embodying many worthy and dignified tenets! Both Steinmetz and McGuire acknowledge that the musicians of the CBC Radio Orchestra are world-class. They have no quarrel with their competence or the ongoing fulfillment of the orchestra’s mandate. The CBC Radio Orchestra is the longest running radio project in North American broadcast history and it has managed to continue despite incessant cutbacks in budget and cultural broadcast assignments. World class talent requires world class management. CBC executives Steinmetz, McGuire and Stursberg have failed their audition as world-class managers. Please sympathize with and fear for the next organizations they work for. One can’t imagine that the Radio Orchestra members would be giving out favourable reference letters for them. At best it would be an “I can’t recommend this person too highly….” and leave it up to the reader.
James Rolfe in the Toronto Star
Filed under: In the Press
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:15 am
April 21, 2008
JAMES ROLFE
On March 27, CBC management abruptly announced the termination of the CBC Radio Orchestra after 70 years of musical excellence and creative programming. This orchestra has commissioned hundreds of new compositions, including one of Canada’s finest, Lonely Child by Claude Vivier, and launched the careers of performers such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has gone on to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic and other great orchestras.
Yet this is only one of many cuts to classical programming at CBC Radio over the last three years:
Airtime has been slashed from up to 12 hours on weekdays to five off-peak hours.
All existing classical shows have been, or will be, wiped out without regard to popularity and audience loyalty.
The CBC Young Composers and Young Performers Competitions have been suspended, though they have helped launch performers like pianists Angela Hewitt and Jon Kimura Parker, tenor Ben Heppner, and composers such as Chris Paul Harman and Brian Current, among many others.
Classical music at CBC Records has been cut, just as it won its first Grammy, and in spite of launching the recording careers of numerous artists like soprano Measha Brueggergosman.
Just as Canadian pop music has flourished under CanCon regulations, the CBC has helped to foster generations of Canadian musicians. Performers, composers, students, orchestras and choirs; they have all benefited from promotion and dissemination on CBC Radio. National music programming has bridged geographical, cultural, and language barriers, bringing us together, giving us pride in the musicians we have fostered. And now, this long-standing artistic partnership is being smashed.
What on earth is going on at CBC Radio? These cuts have been inflicted with no meaningful consultation. Attempts by the music community and by listeners to engage in a dialogue about these radical changes have fallen upon the deaf ears of a management that brooks no dissent from either the public or its own ranks.
The new CBC claims to be about diversity, about reflecting the whole spectrum of Canadian musical activity, but what is actually being broadcast in all genres is veering to the middle of the road. What about the roads less travelled? More songs do not create diversity. Two New Hours, the only national program to showcase the music of Canadian composers, is long gone. Commercial music is replacing non-commercial music. The proof? Major record labels support the changes. Is this how we want the CBC to spend our money?
Here’s the irony: In recent years, the arts in Canada have flourished. Artistic activity and audience numbers are skyrocketing and public arts funding has been increased by elected politicians from all parties, at all levels of government. But CBC Radio is marching in the opposite direction, out of step, being held wholly unaccountable by its unelected board.
Who at the CBC has a long-term artistic vision and can imagine something greater than spin and audience numbers? Who at the CBC will take pride in being a steward of Canada’s living culture?
The fate of the CBC Radio Orchestra is a wake-up call to Canada. By killing the orchestra, CBC management has instead killed what little trust or goodwill that remained in the music community. It has abandoned its long-standing role of working in partnership with creative musicians in favour of spinning and repackaging discs. It has abandoned a fiercely loyal audience to chase a demographic that is already well-served by the Internet and commercial and campus radio. It has gone from being a leader to being a follower. It has shown a profound lack of pride in the CBC’s pioneering legacy in Canadian music.
The CBC Radio Orchestra belongs to all Canadians, and should be reinstated immediately.
James Rolfe is president of the Canadian League of Composers.
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04/25/08
Paul B. Ohannesian very angry
Filed under: Open Letters
Posted by: site admin [at] 12:27 pm
Paul B. Ohannesian, Artist and Architect (retired)
3538 West 17th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6S 1A1
20 April 2008
The Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6
Dear Prime Minister Harper;
Re: Fate of the CBC Radio Orchestra and Present Direction of CBC Programming
I have just returned from a transcendent concert by the CBC Radio Orchestra and vocal soloists at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia. Prior to the concert, an outdoor rally was well attended by hundreds of concerned CBC listeners who came, like me, to show support for a well-loved Canadian cultural institution of national significance.
Words cannot begin to describe my disgust with the way in which CBC management has gradually diluted the once-strongly intelligent programming of CBC-2, the FM radio station. The announcement earlier this month of the imminent demise of our 70-year-old radio orchestra was the final straw. The way in which this action was passed off with a shrug by CBC management as “an internal matter” is an insult to every single Canadian, for whom the CBC over many, many years has presented the best of music, drama, commentary, educational programming, news analysis, and so much else in fulfilment of its mandate as expressed in the Canadian Broadcast Act of 1991, “to inform, enlighten, and entertain.” The act also speaks of cultural diversity, a value that as a Canadian, I of course uphold. But, as I will suggest below, management’s abandonment of programming that carries forward the valuable traditions of the past is a fatal flaw in its interpretation of its mandate.
I am now 61 years old. I arrived in Canada at the age of 23 from the United States, and from the very first I chose CBC as my sole radio fare, both AM and FM. It has given me the majority of my knowledge of Canada and is the reason that I am so proud to be a member of the Canadian mosaic. I am an avid amateur musician, and a day is not complete for me without music, and I mean challenging, uplifiting, well-crafted music, preferably with an introduction to set the context delivered by one of CBC’s excellent musically-trained show hosts. Music has often been the means by which I have made it through challenging life circumstances with my sense of hope and optimism intact.
Over the years, I have relied on CBC, and in particular its fabulous Vancouver Radio Orchestra, to give me both the latest and the time-proven best of concert music. The young composers of Canada have always had important things to say to this country and to the world outside our borders. The CBC Radio Orchestra has in the past commissioned and recorded many fine works by them. Besides the orchestra, Canada’s choirs, organists, keyboard and other instrumental and vocal artists have all had a ready forum in the CBC. I am very troubled by the news that not only has the Radio Orchestra been given a death sentence, but CBC also intends to end its program Choral Concert with all the immensely important support and encouragement and exposure for Canada’s professional and amateur choirs that this program has provided. Also planned is the ending of contracts with several excellent concert-music show hosts. I could go on, but need not list more losses; you will have received many other message similar to mine with plenty of additional examples.
It is abundantly clear from the recent actions and forthcoming plans of the CBC management that it has abandoned its traditional role of supporting and helping to build the cultural heritage of Canada. It is equally clear that its stated policy of giving far more exposure to singer-songwriters at the expense of concert music of all types is an ideologically-driven choice. Management has apparently construed its mandate as one of turning its back on young as well as experienced composers, performers, and listeners in favour of pandering to the demands of something it chooses to call “a demographic shift”, that is, toward the same kind of simplistic and shallow programming that is already served very well by the numerous commercial radio stations. In other words, CBC is now going to use my tax dollars to give me the very kind of programming that I shun while taking away from me the programming that I love. The arrogance of this policy is manifest.
Management has put forward the argument that it must try to appeal to “the young”, but who are these “young” persons? My professional musician wife’s experience at piano and instrumental recitals and contests is that there are many aspiring young players who expect to enjoy serious music all their lives and for whom the “demographic” CBC management is chasing is of no, or very secondary interest. I well remember my own early years in a home that provided me a piano, lessons, and daily exposure to classical music on the radio and with recorded music. With such support, I went on to finding traditional music a constant companion through both good times and bad. Such a gift! Canada has been giving that gift to its listeners since the CBC was founded. Now its management, and its political masters, has concluded that the treasures of Western music are to be hidden away in favour of songs, narratives set to music usually of the simplest possible kind, repetitive, unchallenging, and only thinly nourishing to the mind or soul.
I have the honour of having encapsulated a group discussion by suggesting the name by which the growing fervour for retaining CBC’s quality programming and its Radio Orchestra has become known: Stand on Guard for CBC. These words, of course, echo the opening words of Canada’s national anthem. So I ask both Canada’s elected officials and the Management of CBC alike this question:
Of what use is it to spend huge resources in money and energy to create armed forces for the defense of Canada’s way of life if, at the same time, the finest cultural achievements of Canada are being gutted and destroyed? Of what use is it? What kind of country will result? The present treatment of Canada’s treasured radio network by the Government (in its progressive shrinking of CBC funding year by year — regrettably done by previous governments as well) and by CBC’s management can only lead to furthering the erosion, already far advanced, of Canada’s unique voice in the world. This is unacceptable to any reasonable, thinking Canadian!
I join with thousands of others across Canada in demanding that the CBC Radio Orchestra be given back its funding and its mission, and that the present trend toward dumbing down the CBC-2 Radio network be reversed.
Sincerely and adamantly yours,
Paul B. Ohannesian
3 comments
3 Response to “Paul B. Ohannesian very angry”
1. EmilyGray Says:
April 26th, 2008 at 1:36 am Wow, this is the first I’ve heard about Choral Concert ending. I’m saddened, but somehow not surprised. What sort of trash will they replace Choral Concert with?
2. Author : Jane Forsyth, Ottawa says:
Such eloquence and passion from Mr. Ohannesian who echoes my sentiments in his letter. I am homeschooling three girls in Ottawa and Radio 2 is the only Radio they know. It has been one of our main tools of learning as they have grown as musicians themselves. The message being sent by the CBC heads is very disturbing for me and for my children. Radio 2 actually came out with a piece of propaganda, very aggressive in tone, detailing the fabulous changes to the programming and billing itself as “Canada’s adult music network”!! We are terribly saddened by these changes and the message from the CBC that Classical Music is passe. I thought people in leadership positions like that were smart.
3. Geoff Radnor,Ottawa says:
I watched the two committee meetings last week on the 27th and 29th May. Great presentations by six witnesses from Vancouver and one in Montreal. Bramwell Tovey did a fine job. “Accountability” seems to be the way that the committee can call the CBC to order, as we all know the committee cannot get involved in any programmimg decisions, but seeing its the committee and us who provide the money for the programming maybe we can try to influence the management by making them accountable to the audience.