Orchestras Canada

In recent years, Orchestras Canada’s major professional development activities have taken place at our National Meetings, gatherings co-hosted by OC member orchestras that have attracted between 40 and 60 attendees. We’ve had amazing and insightful presentations by top-notch researchers and practitioners on topics of real importance to people concerned with the health and vitality of Canadian orchestras – but until recently, we haven’t been able to share the learnings with our broader membership.

This year, thanks to the generosity of Dr. George Freundlich, Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life, the Ontario Ministry of Culture’s Summer Experience Program and the Canada Summer Jobs program of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, we were able to record four key presentations from Vancouver, hire young Canadian composer/performer Mike Romaniak to edit the presentations and synch them to their PowerPoint slides, and commission, record and synch simultaneous interpretations (in French) of the presentations. And they’re now available for your viewing pleasure on OC’s website! Visit orchestrascanada.org.

For the past several years, Orchestras Canada has been fortunate enough to receive funding to hire a summer student through the Ontario Ministry of Culture’s Summer Experience Program – and 2011 is no exception. For the second year in a row, we’re delighted to welcome Mike Romaniak, a recent graduate in composition and saxophone from the University of Toronto, to the OC team. And because of the generous support of Great West Life, we’re able to extend Mike’s stay with us to a total of thirteen weeks. Mike will be doing a number of things during his time with us, including:

• Revamping and updating our on-line Inventory of Orchestra Music Libraries, a resource valued by many of our smaller-budget orchestra members, whose librarians can use the Inventory to source music in the collections of peer orchestras across the country. You can find the IOML here.
• Renewing our collection of photos of member orchestras, so very useful in keeping our website homepage looking lively and attractive.
• Surveying our members, Orchestra News readers, Facebook and Twitter followers to learn more about their expectations of OC’s communications and information-provision initiatives. We put a lot of time and effort into Orchestra News, our website, and our social media initiatives – and we’d like to make sure that it’s time well-spent.
• Enriching and organizing the Resources section of the OC website.
• Working with sound recordings and the PowerPoint slides from the professional development sessions at OC’s national meetings to create on-line, dual-language learning modules accessible to all of our members. (Mike’s sound editing skills, honed through his composition studies, come in very handy!)

Speaking about his work this summer, Mike says, “it’s great to be back at Orchestras Canada! This summer, I’ll be striving to make our resources more accessible and convenient for our members.”

If you’d like to reach Mike, you can do so by phone at 416-366-8834 x223 or by email at mike@oc.ca.

We continue to post program updates for the National Orchestras Meetings in Vancouver in June – and you can find the latest information about the gathering on our website, here.

If electronic media and digital strategy interests you, we’ll spend time on that on Day 1, June 13. We’re especially excited about Revenue Day – Tuesday, June 14 – during which fundraising and marketing experts from across North America will join us to lead sessions on subscription growth, social media applications, legacy fundraising, fundraising ethics, developing a compelling case for support, talking to donors, and a full update on the Patron Growth Initiative. And we’re making time on June 15 for the peer group discussions that you most value – along with the opportunity to help set Orchestras Canada’s advocacy and programming priorities for the year – and years – ahead.

None of this happens without the help of some very special people and companies. (As many of you are accustomed to writing in your fundraising materials, “ticket revenue covers only a small portion of the costs of presenting this concert.” We’re the same.)

The Canada Council for the Arts has generously underwritten travel subsidies for the meetings, and we thank them on your behalf.

We’re thrilled to announce that again this year Great West Life has come on board as a sponsor for the National Orchestras Meetings. Their support will sponsor translation for the conference sessions, June 13-15 and for the creation of multimedia presentations (in both languages) for distribution to orchestras across Canada following the meeting. Our sincere thanks to Great West Life for their continued support.

And we are humbled to acknowledge a significant gift from Dr. George Freundlich, in support of the national meetings. Dr. George has been a long-time and valued friend and advisor to OC, and we really could not do what we do without him.

On-line registration is now open for Orchestras Canada’s National Orchestras Meeting, scheduled to take place in Winnipeg June 20-23, 2010, and co-hosted by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony.  The meetings feature workshops and presentations led by experts, music, peer meetings and updates from across the country – and all but the pre-conference session will feature simultaneous interpretation, thanks to the support of Great West Life.  We may be biased, but we think it’s a rich and wonderful program!  To learn more, please visit the Winnipeg 2010 pages on our website here.

Orchestras Canada’s donors are at the heart of our work on behalf of Canadian orchestras.  We are grateful to everyone who has made a gift to Orchestras Canada this year, and – thanks to their generosity – we are only $2142 short of our individual fundraising target for the year ending March 31.  With just over three weeks left to go, we know we can reach our goal:  but we need your help. To make a gift to Orchestras Canada, you can:

1.  Visit our giving page at CanadaHelps.org here.
2.  Call Jennifer Caines at the OC office, to make a gift by credit card: 416-366-8834 x221
3.  Mail a cheque to

Orchestras Canada/Orchestres Canada
203-460 rue College Street
Toronto, ON M6G 1A1

March 15 marks the deadline for participation in a new survey of Canadian orchestras’ community engagement programs – and we’ve already been amazed and impressed by the level of participation you’ve shown!  Many thanks to all OC members who have taken the time and contributed to this report.  At the end of January, Jennifer Caines emailed the survey to 71 orchestras; as of earlier this week, 35 orchestras have responded.  We look forward to sharing the results with you later this spring.  If you’d like more information, please get in touch with Jennifer at jennifer[at]oc[dot]ca.

Orchestra News will not be published next week, March 12.  We’ll be back with a blockbuster issue on March 19.