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Hello Out There! Canada’s New Music in the World, 1950–85 ed. by John Beckwith and Dorith R. Cooper, and: Musical Canada: Words and Music Honouring Helmut Kallmann ed. by John Beckwith and Frederick A. Hall (review)
- University of Toronto Quarterly
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 59, Number 1, Fall 1989
- pp. 245-248
- Review
- Additional Information
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HUMANITIES 245 preserved; recordings are the principal repositories of jazz musical history. In the absence of enough truly representative recordings of jazz as it was played in Montreal, Gilmore has chosen to concentrate on the social, political, and economic forces which governed the lives of professional musicians who sought in the playing of jazz more artistic fulfilment than their regular jobs usually provided. Few of the many talented musicians who lived and played jazz in Montreal ever received much notice at home or elsewhere; most practised their art in relative obscurity. It is their lives Gilmore seeks to illuminate. While the best-known products of the Montreal jazz scene - Oscar Peterson, Maynard Ferguson, and Paul BIey - are not ignored, Gilmore discusses them mainly in terms of their activities while resident in Montreal as part of the local jazz community. Afro-Americans have always been of central importance to the development ofjazz, and Gilmore believes thatjazz in the authentic sense was not performed in Montreal until the arrival of black musicians from the United States around 1920; despite racial barriers, blacks, such as the Canadians Myron Sutton, Steep Wade, and Nelson Symonds, along with many American expatriates, continued to make significant contributions to the Montreal music scene. Gilmore's study also adds important details to the recorded history of Montreal's black community. Jazz is a group activity, and Montreal was unique for the collaborations and tensions between the musicians who played together - anglophones and francophones, blacks, Asians, and whites, Canadians, Americans, and Europeans. More than just the story of jazz in Montreal, Swinging in Paradise is essential reading for those interested in the social history of Canada's most cosmopolitan city. (DOUGLAS ROLLINS) John Beckwith and Dorith R. Cooper, editors. Hello Out There! Canada's New Music in the World, 1950-85 CanMus Documents 2. Institute for Canadian Music. v, 197 John Beckwith and Frederick A. Hall, editors. Musical Canada: Words and Music Honouring Helmut Kallmann University of Toronto Press. xiii, 369. $37.00 These two works, though in sharply different ways, illuminate the musical life of Canada. The first, a paperbound set of conference proceedings that manages to be user-friendly despite the lack ofan index, centres upon 'the dissemination of Canadian new music.' The second ranges across nearly three centuries of Canadian music-making. It brings together nineteen articles (and four new compositions), each by a different author, in a handsomely produced scholarly Festschrift for 246 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 Helmut Kallmann (b Berlin, 1922), founding chief ofthe Music Division of the National Library of Canada and eminent historian of the country's music. Together, these two volumes reflect the interests and industry of John Beckwith, composer and director of the Institute for CanadianMusic at the University of Toronto, who coedited both volumes. As its title hints, Hello Out There! is an exercise in advocacy, exploring the pervasive sense of isolation and neglect among Canadian composers of music for the concert hall. In contrast, the goal of Musical Canada is that of traditional historical scholarship: to document the historical record. Beckwith's involvement, revealing both a passionate concern for the musical present and a sharp curiosity about the past, testifies that he considers the two complementary and equally deserving ofinvestigation. Hello Out There! is an exemplary set of conference proceedings. Is the feeling 'of isolation often voiced by Canadian composers' justified: the feeling that, in an international musical world dominated by promotion, publicity, and reputation, Canadian music operates at a deep disadvantage ? Or is the plight of Canadian composers 'just part of a worldwide contemporary-music problem'? What has actually been'accomplished by agencies and individuals committed' to disseminating Canadian new music? In six conference sessions, among which three concerts of new music were interspersed, these questions were addressed from different perspectives. First, the conferees heard from administrators of national cultural agencies (the Department of External Affairs, the CBC English network, the Canadian Music Centre). Next, the role of 'the media' television , film, radio, publishing, and also the Performing Rights Organization of Canada Ltd - was set forth by people working in those fields. In the third session, representatives from Argentina, Sweden, Israel, and Hong Kong compared the Canadian...