Chairman, and honourable members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today.
The Glenn Gould Foundation would be honoured to play a significant role in the Canada 150 celebrations. In fact, we have actually been developing plans to mark this historic year for some time. To explain how, I need to outline our primary areas of focus today. Then we can move on to our plans for the future.
First is to cement the Glenn Gould Foundation's position as a global cultural institution and the Glenn Gould Prize as the world's pre-eminent award for artistic achievement and creativity in the service of humanity, and as a powerful vehicle for using the arts to transform lives. Effectively, our objective is to make Canada the home of the Nobel Prize of the arts. In so doing, our goal is to project Canada as the leading centre of excellence and innovation on the world stage. It is to build the Canadian brand, if you will, using our most iconic symbol of originality and creativity: Glenn Gould.
Second is the celebration of our future. Of course, the young emerging artists of today are our creative future, which is why we present the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize to recognize and promote the promise of outstanding young artists. Now we're going further with the establishment of the Glenn Gould concerts. They are a wonderful platform for recognizing and promoting the most gifted young musical talent in the land and for boosting their career development by associating them with Gould's legacy.
The first of these concerts featured eight brilliant young artists and was held for Their Excellencies, the vice-regal couple, at Rideau Hall last December. Our plan is to continue in this vein, seeking out the best and brightest. In fact, this very evening we have a concert at Carnegie Hall featuring a young Montreal pianist.
Now the template has been established, and we're going to be partnering with other arts organizations across the country to present these Glenn Gould concerts to the Canadian public from coast to coast to coast.
That brings us to 2017 and the unique opportunity to take our foundation's 30 years of experience with world-class celebrations and the promotion of gifted young artists to the ultimate level by creating a Canadian musical dream team of incredible young musicians. This roster of fresh new talent will reflect the rich diversity of musical cultures and genres in our great country, from east coast Celtic to Québecois chanteurs; from aboriginal, jazz, classical, country, blues, urban, singer-songwriter to folk rock and metal. We plan to conduct a national search for young Canadian musicians of true superstar potential throughout 2016. This will create public awareness, anticipation, and excitement, both for our young artists who are vying for pride of place and for the coming 150th anniversary year. These exceptional young Canadians will receive their big breaks in the sesquicentennial year. Like our Olympians, they'll be given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own the podium by becoming our musical ambassadors not only to Canadians, telling our musical stories to ourselves, but also to the world.
In short, the Glenn Gould Foundation proposes to mount a spectacular year-long Canada 150 world tour. Our specially selected dream team, representing the cream of our future musical stars, will perform for six months across the country, in major venues and smaller communities from coast to coast to coast, in a unique showcase presentation of Canada's most exciting musicians under 25. The six months in Canada will culminate in an epic Canada Day concert to express musically the dreams, hopes, and aspirations of all Canadians.
For the remaining six months we'll be taking the show on the road, visiting world cultural capitals and spreading awareness of Canadian excellence and cultural brilliance. Our young artists will be a living expression of Canada's national confidence, maturity, and culture of innovation. They will be spreading the word to our friends and most valuable trading partners alike. The adventures and triumphs of the Canada 150 musical team will be the stuff of legend. Captured by media and preserved in documentaries, they will inspire all Canadians, especially our youth, to strive for excellence and to always believe in the limitless potential of this great nation.
It is our hope to present a commemorative multi-media memento of our musical Team Canada 150 as a gift to every Canadian schoolchild as an inspiration in years to come and as a keepsake to remember this historic year.
The Glenn Gould Foundation possesses the experience, the network, the expertise, and certainly the big vision, and above all, the powerful symbol of Canadian excellence represented by Gould himself that are needed to bring this ambitious goal of a national celebration of our musical future to the world.
Thank you for letting me share the vision with you. I hope the members of the committee will embrace it and join with us in helping to make this dream a reality.