Launch Announcement - CMC Online Audio Gallery
On Tuesday, August 1st, the Audio Gallery became the latest feature to be added to the Canadian Music Centre’s innovative and award-winning website - www.musiccentre.ca. Accessible to online visitors from around the world, this virtual exhibit highlights some of the treasures to be found in the CMC’s Anne Southam Audio Archive. Its use of audio clips, archival images and programme notes provides users with a context for 25 recordings and is intended to inspire further interest in this archival collection as well as Canadian music in general.
The CMC’s Anne Southam Audio Archive is one of the largest sources of non-commercially recorded Canadian concert music and therefore functions as an essential research tool for anyone interested in the work of Canadian composers. With over 8,000 individual audio tracks, the value of this collection lies not only in the fact that it contains hundreds of works that exist in no other form, but also in the collective story that it tells about the classical music heritage of this country.
In the Fall of 2005, the CMC embarked on the process of improving both the access to and preservation of this audio material through creating digital master files to be housed on an in-house server. The ultimate goal of this audio digitization project is to provide home users with subscription-based streaming access to this material. The CMC is taking a phased approached with the material first becoming available for streaming access at its National Office in Toronto. It will then be available at its four other regional locations in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Sackville.
The launch of the Audio Gallery marks the end of the first phase of this exciting project and the CMC is very grateful for the generous financial support of the Audio Visual Preservation Trust (www.avtrust.ca). AVTrust is a non-profit organization which was created in 1994 under the leadership of the National Archives of Canada, with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, to explore the need for a national strategy for the protection of Canadian archival materials, and to provide access through partnerships with the audio-visual community.
The CMC is now in the planning stages for the next phase of this audio digitization process and is looking forward to providing ever greater accessibility to this very important national treasure.
