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Arraymusic

Mission

Based in Toronto, Arraymusic has played a leading role in Canada’s diverse and creative contemporary music scene since 1972, acting as a laboratory for innovative work from artists from every corner of our community. Our 1,200 sq ft rehearsal and performance venue, The Array Space, is a welcoming creative hub supporting emerging and established curators, composers, musicians and multi-media artists from Toronto, across Canada, and globally. 

Values

  • Exploration

    Arraymusic creates profound and meaningful artistic journeys through a playful, respectful attitude – free of expectations, open to new ideas, and confident in discovering new horizons. We embrace daring choices, speculative investigations and ever-evolving collaborations for explorations and presentations across artistic disciplines and media. 

  • Connection

    Arraymusic’s programs bring diverse participants together to strengthen community and foster cross-pollination. We embrace, welcome, and encourage participants from all traditions, cultures, styles, disciplines, incomes, genders, and ages. 

  • Play

    Arraymusic provides the community with an artistic playground. A safe, affordable, well outfitted, accessible performance space with a toolkit of instruments and technology, supported by talented practitioners, to enable creation, presentation, documentation, distribution and collaboration. 

Programs

 Arraymusic’s core programming includes three annual series of Array Productions, curated by practicing artists who are leaders in their respective fields, in creative disciplines ranging from contemporary concert music to improvisation, multimedia practices, and beyond. 

Our outreach programming includes the Array Composer’s Workshop – our flagship professional development program for early career composers – and monthly hands-on workshops for adults and youth. 

The Array Space enables Arraymusic to support creative work from artists beyond our own productions, including a Resident Artist Program, regular workshops and salons, and multiple co-presentation events annually. Ongoing support from our funders allows us to make the Array Space available to Toronto’s broader artistic community at below-market rental rates for rehearsals, workshops, recordings, and performances – making Arraymusic and the Array Space a vital player operating at the nexus of Toronto’s performing arts sector. 

Array is seeking to augment its board by adding directors with expertise in arts administration, fundraising and marketing. We are also interested in adding a Treasurer and a lawyer to the Board. 

The board operates primarily as a governance board providing oversight and guidance to staff. Directors are elected for a 3-year term and may reapply after their term expires. There are currently 10 directors and 3 vacancies. 

Director Expectations

  • The board meets as a whole every 2 months for 2 hours on the 3rd Monday of that month.
  • Most meetings are video conferences, but we meet in person from time to time.
  • There are no board standing committees at this time. The board forms teams to implement specific initiatives
  • A board committee is formed annually to select a new curator via an open call for one of our 3 series each year.
  • Directors are expected to leverage their personal networks for fundraising, marketing and ticket sales.
  • Directors are expected to donate their professional expertise as required e.g. legal, artistic, financial, marketing, fundraising, etc.
  • We are funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
  • Arraymusic is a registered charity with appropriate directors’ insurance.
  • As a registered charity, directors are volunteers without compensation for their work as a director other than for out-of-pocket expenses.
  • Our annual budget is $350,000 and as of the last fiscal year we had a healthy $46,000 accumulated surplus. 

Artistic programming is carried out by 3 curators who are contracted for staggered 3-year terms. Operations are managed by 2 full-time staff led by a General Director. The Array Space is managed by a House & Production Manager. Financial reporting and bookkeeping are contracted. 

Arraymusic is committed to a diverse, inclusive, and equitable environment where all board directors, staff, performers, creators, contractors, volunteers, and audience members feel respected and valued regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation or identity, disability, education, or any other bias. 

Application 

To apply please forward your resume and an expression of interest to the board chair Mark Wilson at [email protected]. 

General Director – David Schotzko

As a soloist, chamber musician, and curator, percussionist David Schotzko is a passionate advocate for contemporary composers, having premiered over 300 works with percussion by composers from around the globe. He was a founding member of the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in New York and Chicago and was ICE’s Program Director from 2002 to 2008.

Since moving to Toronto in 2010, David has served as Artistic Advisor for Ottawa Chamberfest, and curated programs for Arraymusic, Intersection, the University of Toronto, and more.


House & Production Manager – Matt Legge

Matt Legge is a recording engineer and producer from Nashville, TN. His engineering work includes major label and independent artists across a broad spectrum, though he is best known for his contributions to the country, rock, and Americana genres. Early in his career, Matt was fortunate to work with Taylor Swift on her multiple Grammy-winning album Fearless, serving as assistant and engineer on the song “White Horse”. The song would get Matt nominated for a TEC Award in Outstanding Creative Achievement in 2009, and it won Grammy awards for “Best Female Country Vocal Performance” and “Best Country Song” at the 2010 Grammy Awards, as well as being featured on the television show Grey’s Anatomy. This boost to visibility and his unwavering work ethic lead him to engineering for artists Peter Frampton, Ringo Starr, Ricky Skaggs, and Jerry Lee Lewis. His genre-blending style came from his childhood, tinkering with the family’s record players and tape recorders to create mixtapes and remixes of his favorite songs. This influence became evident as his career progressed and he felt more comfortable introducing his ideas into the process. In 2016, with only a few loose ideas written on construction paper and two weeks booked at Nashville’s Omni Studios, Matt and supergroup Hard Working Americans recorded the band’s second full length album Rest in Chaos. The album’s producer, Dave Schools (Widespread Panic), was especially welcoming of Matt’s input, having him stitch together ideas from their recordings along with found sounds which they crafted into a full length album. The album surprised many listeners with what the Boston Globe describes as a “Likably twisted strain of cosmic-hippie, gonzo-outlaw music” and “a major step forward for the band”, with Rolling Stone calling it “A fascinating roots-rock collaboration”. Also in 2016, Matt recorded Peter Frampton’s album Acoustic Classics. Billboard Magazine reported that Frampton overcame “Stubbornness and fear” to reapproach his classic songs in a way that gave the listener an intimate listening experience as if he were to say “”Hey, sit down, I’ve just written a song’ and I sit down and play you ‘Lines on My Face’ or whatever”. In 2018, Matt and his family moved to Denver, CO where he began producing projects ranging from indie rock to classical. “I want to give people something they’ve never heard, yet feel familiar enough with to accept” became the motto that influenced Matt’s production techniques. Rock critic Dave Marsh wrote of one of his records “I can tell you about its surface but I haven’t gotten to the bottom of it. I’m not really sure there is one.” Matt is excited to continue his audio experimentation at Arraymusic, and is looking forward to creating more magic moments with Toronto’s music community.

 

Board of Directors

  • Mark Wilson, Chair & Treasurer
  • Michelle Breslin
  • Kendall Kiddie
  • Laurie Kwasnik
  • David Lidov
  • Afraaz Adam Mulji
  • Michael Palumbo
  • Adam Tindale
  • Cynthia Wilkey
  • Gayle Young

 

This season through to 2025, Bruce A. Russell is in residence.

Bruce A. Russell aka Ibrahim El Mahboob (he/him, b. 1968) is a composer and self-taught pianist living and working in Toronto (Tkarón:to, the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat). He studied at York University with James Tenney and Phillip Werren. His early years were spent playing in bands and releasing DIY cassettes of art pop and experimental music, as well as composing predominantly electronic scores for dance, theatre and interdisciplinary productions.

Frustrated by systemic racism, personal struggles, and a lack of interest in his work, he stopped seeking a career in music. He continued composing in private, however, sometimes sharing his work through social media. Interest in his work increased in 2020, resulting in performances by Second Note Duo, Prism Percussion, the San Juan Symphony, Idaho Falls Symphony, Grant Park Orchestra and Regina Symphony Orchestra. Arraymusic presented the first full concert of his music in November of that year, and he will be Composer in Residence at Array for three seasons from 2022 through 2025.

He has composed new works for Gryphon Trio, the Madawaska Quartet and Thin Edge New Music Collective. He is currently creating music for Ian Kamau’s live multi-media work Loss. He was the host of Radio Music Gallery and has written for Musicworks and I Care if You Listen. His interests are in 20th and 21st century concert music especially postminimalism, and music of the African diaspora.

Equity is the single most important challenge in today’s contemporary music scene, and our work as artists, artistic directors, and curators cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which we all live and create.  

As a legacy organization receiving operating funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and numerous private funding bodies large and small, Arraymusic continues to benefit from the historical privileging of European art forms and the systematic suppression of marginalized voices. Much work has been done in classical music and contemporary classical music over the past half century toward achieving gender equity. However, as necessary as that work continues to be to promote women within our discipline, we have for too long overlooked the continued oppression of Black, Indigenous, and non-Black people of colour, of the LGBTQ2S+ community, and of the Deaf, Disabled, and Mad community.

Arraymusic has a relatively reputable history of inclusive programming, and our role as an artistic hub through our management of The Array Space has allowed us to actively support a diverse range of artists from a broad swath of Toronto’s cultural scene. We have publicly committed to gender parity in our own programming through the Canadian League of Composers Gender Parity Pledge, and over the last several seasons we have worked to include more work by composers from marginalized communities and to challenge the inherited values of the western classical canon. We offer Pay-What-You-Want ticketing to overcome economic barriers, and installed a ramp and elevator to enable access for people with physical disabilities. Nonetheless, without a specific commitment to a broader understanding of equity, we have continued to privilege whiteness over other identificatory factors.

Beginning now, in our 2020-21 season Arraymusic will take the following actions:

  • We will actively seek out Black, Indigenous, non-Black people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, and Deaf, Disabled, and Mad composers, and will prioritize the inclusion of their works across the balance of our programs.
  • We are establishing an annual fellowship for emerging BIPOC composers to support their participation in our annual Young Composers’ Workshop: providing housing and transportation subsidies, as well as a per-diem to offset the substantial costs of spending a month living and working in Toronto. We are able to fund one fellowship during 2020-2021 season and will work to fund additional equity fellowships in upcoming years. 
  • Other future initiatives include open calls for proposals to The Array Space’s Resident Ensemble and Co-Presentation programs, where priority will be given to Black, Indigenous, non-Black people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, and Deaf, Disabled, and Mad artists.
  • We are seeking to change the organization from within in the coming years, focusing on diversity in all hiring and recruitment decisions: from curatorial leadership to artists, staff, and board.

Most important: we acknowledge that we will inevitably fail at points in this process, and we commit to continually listening, learning, and improving. We invite you to reach out directly to us with comments and criticisms, and will be available via email at:

David Schotzko, General Director
[email protected]

Mark Wilson, Chair
[email protected]

We look forward to continued change, and to an ongoing public dialog with the many artists, audiences, peers, and supporters working for social justice in the arts and in the world.

To ensure the safety of all Array Space users we have adopted and enforced a strict Anti-Harassment and Discrimination Policy.

 

  1. FASCINATING READING ABOUT ARRAY’S EARLY YEARS:
    Eatock, Colin. “Arraymusic: the first fifteen years,” Three Studies, CanMus Documents 4 (Toronto 1989)

  2. WHAT THE CANADIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA SAYS ABOUT ARRAY’S BEGINNINGS
    https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/arraymusic-emc