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ASSOCIATION OF CANADIAN WOMEN COMPOSERS
l'Association des femmes compositeurs canadiennes
20 St. Joseph Street, Toronto, ON M4Y 1J9
www.acwc.ca
Profile and history from 1981 to 2005
Introduction
The Association of Canadian Women Composers/l'Association des femmes compositeurs canadiennes (ACWC/AFCC) is the only professional association of women composers and musicians in Canada. It actively supports music written by Canadian women, maintains a Website for the promotion of its Members (www.acwc.ca) and publishes a bi-annual Bulletin highlighting activities and articles of interest to Members. It supports educational activities which promote the history of music by women in Canada and maintains an Archive (cf. below) of over 120 years of materials related to the music of Canadian and other women composers.
The ACWC/AFCC is a not-for-profit organization run by a volunteer Board and it has no paid employees. Primary funding support comes from membership fees and donations. The ACWC/AFCC has received some funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the SOCAN Foundation to develop and maintain a Website and to 'partner' with presenting organizations and individual performers to present concerts and events to promote the music of our Members. We are affiliated with and supported by the Canadian Women Composers' Foundation. The ACWC/AFCC is also a reciprocal member of the International Alliance of Women in Music.
History
Carolyn Lomax along with a handful of Toronto composers: Ann Southam, Mary Gardiner, Maggie Burstyn and others had an initial gathering of interested women composers in September of 1981. It was fueled by a desire to fill a void in the Canadian music scene: the absence of women composers in concert programming across the country. There were women composers across Canada who were unaware of one another, had no network of support, no spokesperson and no means to have a method of advocacy for their own music. Early meetings in member's homes formed the kernel of the organization which eventually came to be called the Association of Canadian Women Composers/l'Association des femmes compositeurs canadiennes (ACWC/AFCC). Carolyn Lomax was the Founder, Ann Southam the Chair and Mary Gardiner as Secretary/Treasurer. Membership then consisted of composers mainly living in Toronto.
The first Annual General Meeting took place in Guelph in 1982, the following year in Hamilton and eventually the Association began to grow into a national organization as more members joined. A Directory of all Members was published in 1987. Currently the membership stands at 60 representing women across Canada and a few who are abroad. We are engaged in a vigorous membership drive to boost our numbers.
Promotional Activities
Over the years Annual General Meetings have been held in different cities across Canada featuring concerts, panel discussions, listening sessions and networking. The ACWC/AFCC 20th Anniversary Festival: Then, Now and Beyond, A Festival of Music by Women was a major collaboration between the Ottawa Chamber Music Society, the Universities of Ottawa and Carleton in 2002. Over a three day period, it included 9 concerts, 7 new works commissioned for the occasion; a vast variety of music by Members was presented: music for brass quintet, string quartet, piano trio, choir, organ, electroacoustic, percussion, jazz/experimental as well as a concert of music written for young performers. Symposiums, panel discussions and lectures drew people in from around the area, some from abroad and there was good media coverage of the event; 4 concerts were recorded for broadcast by the CBC.
Educational and Archival Activities
Women composers are still to some extent a rarity in concert programming, there are barely a handful of women as role models teaching composition in universities, colleges or other accredited musical institutions. Though it was thought commendable for a lady in the late 1800's to study piano performance as a suitable parlor entertainment, few know of the feisty musical pioneers the early Canadian women really were who wrote music for different instruments, toured across the country, south of the border and in Europe as composers and performers and who are inexorably woven into the fabric of the development of concert music in Canada.
Few people know that Canada's second "national" anthem: Hockey Night in Canada was written by Dolores Claman in 1968. The earliest known work by a woman found by the Canadian Heritage Music Society is written for piano, published in 1841 called the Canada Union Waltz written anonymously "By a Canadian Lady". There is a vast and rich history of women writing and performing music in Canada which is largely still unknown, unheard and unpublished. The ACWC/AFCC has an accumulated an Archive of material which is unique in Canada consisting of some of this music, recordings, LPs, tapes, interviews, correspondence, course materials, music and other ephemera which it would like to preserve, catalogue and eventually make it accessible to the public, to schools and to further research.
The ACWC/AFCC wishes to build on the achievements of the past, encourage women composers of the present and develop a body of well researched, catalogued and preserved archival material accessible to students, researchers and performers in the future. It would like to increase and broaden its membership base to reflect the varied cultures which have made their home here and to raise its profile in the Canadian and International Music scene.
Board of Directors 2005-2006
Elma Miller, Chair and Archivist [Burlington, Ontario]
Darlene Chepil Read, Secretary [Edmonton, Alberta]
Joanna Estelle, Treasurer [Ottawa, Ontario]
Evelyn Stroobach, Membership Secretary [Nepean, Ontario]
Stella terHart, Bulletin Editor [Bobcaygeon, Ontario]
Patricia Dirks, Web-Administrator [Waterloo, Ontario]
Diana McIntosh, Member at large [Winnipeg, Manitoba]
Suzanne Hebert-Tremblay, Member at large [Montreal, Quebec]
Colleen Ostoforoff, Planning [Toronto, Ontario]
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