Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My invitation to appear today has been linked to my involvement as president of the Toronto Blues Society. I am here also as someone active in popular music as a concert and festival producer. I am a consulting artist manager and I am currently executive director of the Guelph Jazz Festival. My experience over the past 30 years has positioned me well to view the relationship between CBC Radio and blues, jazz, folk, and world music communities.
On behalf of the Toronto Blues Society, I bring the committee copies of the commemorative CD released in 2007 entitled Women's Blues Revue Live. The recording is drawn from CBC Radio's archive of concerts recorded live over 10 years featuring 15 Canadian women blues singers. The event first began in a nightclub seating 150, and now it takes place in Toronto's Massey Hall.
The CD recording exists because CBC Radio was involved as a producing partner. I bring this example to the committee because there has always been a challenge in securing a broadcast home and a budget for the Women's Blues Revue concert. The contribution by CBC Radio has been in the neighbourhood of $5,000 per concert, a relatively small amount, but significant for a non-profit organization. The most prominent broadcast home for the recording has been on Holger Petersen's Saturday Night Blues, now aired weekly at 11 p.m. on Radio One. Occasionally the concert has landed at Sounds Like Canada, and clips have aired on Definitely Not The Opera. This past year, the concert was aired for the first time on Radio 2's Canada Live as a result of the opening up of broadcast opportunities for more than classical music. We welcome that change.
ln 1988, CBC Radio producers of the now defunct The Entertainers approached me, in my role as artistic director of Toronto's Harbourfront Centre summer concert season, regarding an opportunity to record elements of the then-just-Iaunched WOMAD—Worlds of Music Arts and Dance—festival. It was a revelation. The partnership involved a model whereby a $25,000 blanket fee would give CBC the right to record performances. Thirty-three concerts were recorded that year, and thus began a partnership that involved many further concert recordings over the years.
The problem with that was that although there was interest from CBC producers to expose terrific talent from Canada's multicultural community, there was no broadcast home in the CBC schedule in which to place the recordings. Some years, recordings were made for broadcast; other years, there were none.
The international award-winning Global Village radio magazine show, which enjoyed just one hour of broadcast time, was often home to snips of these concerts. Global Village is a Canadian brand. It is synonymous with Marshall McLuhan and Canadian identity, but it is no longer on the air, and that is a shame.
ln 1997 I produced a concert featuring Vancouver's Spirit of the West performing work from their Open Heart Symphony, produced in collaboration with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The Toronto version of the work enjoyed a 21-piece symphonic ensemble led by violinist Lenny Solomon. The concert was a terrific success and is, I believe, an example of why the CBC Radio Orchestra is redundant.
The original work was not a by-product of the radio orchestra. The body of work was portable. Clearly, if funds assigned to a one-city orchestra can be moved to other projects, there will be greater equity. Equity is a huge part of the proposed changes to Radio 2.
As a concert producer, I have been consulted by CBC Radio management over the years regarding the needs of the broader music community, and the answer has been obvious. With shrinking budgets, there is no way that Radio 2's schedule should remain the bastion of only classical and new music. It is essential that the airwaves and budgets be opened up.
I have been consulted by CBC Radio producers in recent years, as have many of my colleagues, regarding potential changes that are more reflective of Canadian society. ln watching Toronto's robust music community evolve over the period of my career, I have seen many musicians receive artistic and commercial success. However, it would be erroneous to suggest that the broad popular music community is on solid footing.
A massive broadcasting gap exists in Canada between commercial radio and the fledgling campus radio community. Only the CBC exists to support the thousands of Canadian artists in need of exposure. At the beginning of her career, Loreena McKennitt plucked her Celtic harp on the street in front of the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto. Today she is an international icon. I do not wish to suggest that Measha Brueggergosman also busk on the street to advance her career.
I hope that the heritage committee can support CBC Radio management's well-thought-out position that the CBC belongs to all Canadians. All Canadian artists will enjoy fair play and even-handed exposure to the airwaves. The proposed changes to Radio 2 are not about Britney or garage bands; they are about equity.