Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
My name is Jeremy Berkman, and I am a Vancouver-based trombonist who performs with a broad section of musical ensembles, though I'm not a member of the CBC Radio Orchestra. This year's efforts, for me--and to get a sense of the Vancouver music scene--range from the Vancouver Opera Orchestra; A Touch of Brass quintet; the Jill Townsend Big Band; the Spamalot pit orchestra, for the Broadway show music for the cartoon Ed, Edd n Eddy; and the salsa band, Orquesta Goma Dura.
I am also the co-artistic director of the Turning Point Ensemble, which has the nurturing of Canada's musical heritage within its mandate. This heritage is still unfolding, obviously, to reflect the geography, demographics, and multicultural nature of contemporary Canadian society. It requires its musical advocates to be of the highest quality and deepest commitment.
In March the public heard, only through leaked internal discussions, that the management of CBC considers the CBC Radio Orchestra not necessary to sustain any part of this heritage. I'd like to speak about the current value to Canada of this particular orchestra and the special role it has in the musical ecology of our country, and to thank you for bringing the Canadian public into the debate.
As a professional trombonist, I am fortunate to have a life that includes trying my best to make Mozart's intentions true, to bring Stravinsky's passion to life, and to champion those peer voices of so many prospectives in Canada who can say with the universal language of music what is in their heart today and ours tomorrow.
But one of the most thrilling moments I've had in a concert hall was actually as an audience member last season, listening to Veda Hille sing the music of Buffy Sainte-Marie, with an arrangement for the CBC Radio Orchestra by Vancouver music artistic director-composer Giorgio Magnanensi, as part of the orchestra's Great Canadian Songbook project. Since, I've listened to that concert several times on the CBC website.
As I've worked with Veda, I also know that she felt this event was one of the highlights of her international career. This season, as part of the Great Canadian Songbook , in April she and Georgio collaborated with the CBC Radio Orchestra for a fantastic encore with the music of Neil Young.
The CBC Radio Orchestra can play Mozart or the music of contemporary Canadian composers with equal commitment and at an extremely high level. It's a shame that the existence of an organization that has made musical history in Canada for over seventy years, and which has achieved the consistent excellence of the CBC Radio Orchestra, should be threatened.
The CBC management has said that it can more efficiently utilize its insufficient funding by disbanding the orchestra and spending their budget on other efforts. What I fear is that the true cost of dismantling the orchestra is not something that will be felt tomorrow or next week. I actually think every musician in Canada, including myself, has thought at some point that they were performing a concert that CBC should have recorded and didn't.
However, the pain of losing the radio orchestra is something that will be heart-wrenching 25 years from now, when we realize that our international reputation for music-making is diminished; that we have lost composers, who themselves have lost hope that if they write for an orchestra it will be properly recorded in their home country; or that we have missed hearing Canadian performers or conductors who might have been engaged to perform and record with a premiere international ensemble but will be overlooked because they don't have the reputation and experience that would have been gained by working on broadcast recording sessions with an outstanding recording orchestra and sympathetic producer-engineer team.
Accordingly, we will find that many Canadians who for geographical or economic reasons can't attend live concerts in our big cities will never realize that their passions, struggles, and stories could be expressed at the highest artistic level by a national orchestra that is theirs.
What enables the CBC Radio Orchestra to be unique among orchestras is that it doesn't have to bow as deeply to the commercial marketplace. While in practice Canada's orchestras seek, and often achieve, excellence in their programming, their planners are tugged by the necessity of revenue generation. The marketplace is an important stakeholder in the artistic process in helping us find a common denominator, but it is not a determiner of quality. For 70 years the CBC has initiated, with their orchestra, the seeking, nurturing, and championing of Canadian performers and composers based solely on their potential for great music-making. Predictably, this has played a significant role in the careers and artistic output of so many internationally renowned Canadian musicians.
The orchestra lives mostly in what we affectionately call “the basement bunker” of CBC's Studio One, but it is actually the place from which the sunshine has emanated and brought forth our country's greatest musical talent. The issue of the radio orchestra's survival that we are discussing today is big. If the richest of our civilization is reflected in the lasting value of what it creates, the CBC Radio Orchestra is an alchemist for the true wealth of our nation.
I understand that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has discussed the role of public broadcaster in great depth over the past year. I hope that a report from this meeting encourages the finance ministry to fund the CBC at a level where revitalizing the CBC Radio Orchestra is viewed as the wonderful opportunity it should be, and that you will instruct the CBC management to restore its commitment to this radio orchestra so that the wisdom, legacy, and inspiration that the CBC Radio Orchestra provides to Canada has an opportunity to flourish.
Thanks again for the opportunity to speak before you today.