Taking up Lance’s nationalist challenge to the CBC #Canada150

Lawrence Wiliford (AKA Lance Wiliford) posted the following on Facebook today:

I challenge @CBCMusic @CBCclassical @CBCArts to air 15 mins/day of music by Canadian classical composers during 2017. Not film or crossover.#Canada150. Canadian Music Centre Canadian League of Composers/La Ligue Canadienne des Compositeurs The Huffington Post Canada Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des Arts du Canada Canadian Art Song ProjectJustin Trudeau Mélanie Joly Canadian Heritage (I urge others to issue this same challenge to the CBC).

Tenor Lawrence Wiliford (photo: Bruce Zinger)

Lance has been putting his money where his mouth is as co-artistic director of the Canadian Art Song Project,  whereby Canadian composers (let alone singers) are encouraged and supported through concerts, commissions & recordings of new vocal compositions: unlike the CBC.

I don’t know whether anyone has issued the same challenge, but I’m jumping in here.

2017 is significant as the 150th anniversary of Confederation aka the sesquicentennial. A few important promises have been made:

• The Toronto Symphony begin in January 2017 with “Canada Mosaic”, a celebration of Canadian music including 20 unique programs, over 40 newly commissioned orchestral works, in a co-operative venture partnering with 40 other Canadian orchestras, and including an e-learning platform
  
• The Canadian Opera Company are programming Somers’ Louis Riel, one of two operas originally commissioned for the centennial.
  
  • Tafelmusik offer a new multimedia concert—Visions & Voyages: Canada 1663 – 1763 —by Alison Mackay (she’s the one holding the double-bass)
  

And yet the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation / Radio Canada is arguably a much bigger richer institution than the three Toronto institutions I mentioned.

What are you going to do CBC? I think we have a right to know what – if anything—you’re planning. How about it, CBC..!?

I had a look through my google-lens. Here’s something they announced, which doesn’t mention Canadian composers or music as far as I can see: but it’s still only the end of August. Perhaps there’s time for some kind of response?  I remember a CBC that used to be the steward of music in this country, encouraging and funding all sorts of creativity.

It could be so once again.