Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

FEATURE
COMMUNITY
?
∂
ORCHESTRAS
AND THE WHAT BETWEEN
DAVID PERLMAN
E
very year for almost two decades, the surest sign of
spring at The WholeNote has been the steady stream
of canaries, with early birds starting to arrive at our
office just before March break, to latecomers, just under
the wire, straggling in just before our mid-April deadline
for the May issue. (Somewhere between 140 and 150 of
them by the time it’s done.)
These “canaries,” as faithful WholeNote readers know, are not the
avian kind, but rather the individual short profiles (120 words or so)
submitted by Ontario choirs for inclusion in our annual Canary Pages
– the name we give to our annual directory of Ontario choirs.
The directory, now in its 18th year, always appears in print in our
May magazine and remains online as a resource, year round, on our
website. It’s an extraordinarily eclectic read, because any choir active
in our region can join, amateur or professional or a mix of both, auditioned
or not, geared to the social or spiritual pleasures of regular
meeting to sing, or to the focused pursuit of excellence in public
performance. Its main purpose is to talk about the opportunities for
singing that exist in our region, at all ages and levels of skill.
For me this directory affirms the way music making contributes to a
sense of community and how it affirms the human need (stronger than
all the digital isolationism society tempts us with), to come together for
the purpose of participating in the making and sharing of live music.
Every spring, without fail, the canaries flock to The WholeNote, and
every spring, without fail, as the canaries arrive, someone on our team
(usually me) says “One of these years we should try to do the same thing
for orchestras, because orchestras fulfil the same role as choirs do.”
And every spring, because by then it’s too late to get organized to do
it properly, we say “Yes we should, so maybe next year.”
This year, at that moment, I decide instead to reach out to Katherine
Carleton, executive director of Orchestras Canada. The last time we
talked must have been even longer ago than I thought, because at that
time their offices were on College Street, just west of Bathurst, ten
minutes’ walk from The WholeNote office. This time, by contrast, we
find ourselves chatting by phone, two
area codes apart: Orchestras Canada, she
tells me, relocated its headquarters to
Peterborough in 2014!
“Was the 2014 move from downtown
Toronto to Peterborough a case of
Orchestras Canada following you there, or
you following it?” I ask. “It followed me,”
she says. “One of those cases of family
members reaching a time of life where
they needed one of us closer to home.”
Carleton, who has been executive
director of Orchestras Canada since
Katherine Carleton
2005, grew up in Peterborough, and
made her way to Orchestras Canada via, among other things, a stint
as a granting officer in the music section of the Ontario Arts Council
in the early 1990s, “a time when there was adequate funding and a
strong feeling that the health of orchestras was vital to healthy cultural
life. Large or small, they were all of interest to us,” she says.
“So, has the change in location from College and Bathurst to
Peterborough also changed your perception of the role of the organization?”
I ask. “I mean, is it possible for a national arts service organization
to thrive outside of the 18 blocks of downtown Toronto that
we all know the world pivots around?” (Her laugh, in response, has at
least a couple of my co-workers turning their heads, wondering what
I could have said, on the topic of arts service organizations, funny
enough to elicit that response.)
“No, and for a couple of reasons,” she says. “First is that the organization,
and this includes my predecessors, as well as in my time
here, has always thought nationally, which means being equally
available to all our members. OC has 130 member orchestras, none
in the territories, but member orchestras in every Canadian province.
These days we should be able to operate from anywhere where
there’s high-speed internet. Is my life as a concertgoer more challenging
now, from a mindset of ‘gosh it’s easy to get to Roy Thomson Hall
or Jeanne Lamon, or Koerner because it’s on my way home’? Sure. But
ESTHER VINCENT
16 | April 2019 thewholenote.com