The Association of Canadian Women Composers is the only professional association of women composers and musicians in Canada.
Mission statement.
The ACWC wishes to build on the achievements of the past, encourage women and women-identified composers of the present and develop a body of well researched, catalogued and preserved archival material accessible to students, researchers and performers in the future.
It would like to increase and broaden its membership base to reflect the varied cultures, which have made their home here, and to raise its profile in the Canadian and International Music scene.
What we do.
ACWC today.
Since its beginnings in 1981, ACWC has supported a number of projects that advocate and celebrate music composed by women in Canada. It supports educational activities, which promote the history of music by women in Canada, and maintains an Archive over 120 years of materials related to the music of Canadian and other women composers, currently at The Banff Centre Archives.
The ACWC is a not-for-profit organization run by a volunteer Board and has no paid employees. Primary funding support comes from membership fees and donations. The ACWC has received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the SOCAN Foundation to partner with organizations and performers in presenting concerts and events that promote the music of our members.
Promotional activities.
ACWC supports concerts of members’ music throughout Canada and beyond, including Toronto, Hamilton, Waterloo, Montreal, Halifax, Vancouver, and elsewhere. ACWC music is being heard around the word, with current initiatives taking ACWC music to parts of Europe and USA. The showcasing of ACWC music in New York City by Sandbox Percussion is but one example.
Annual General Meetings, now held online, were formerly held in different cities across Canada, often featuring concerts, panel discussions, listening sessions and networking.
The ACWC 20th Anniversary Festival: Then, Now and Beyond, A Festival of Music by Women was a major collaboration between the Ottawa Chamber Music Society and the Universities of Ottawa and Carleton in 2002, with concerts recorded for broadcast by the CBC.
Educational and archival activities.
Canadian women composers’ works are increasingly programmed throughout Canada, with a growing number of women teaching music and composition in universities, colleges or other accredited musical institutions.
The earliest published work by a Canadian woman, The Canada Union Waltz for piano, “By a Canadian Lady” who remains anonymous, dates from 1841. But the archives of the Ursuline Monastery in Quebec contain sophisticated works by their nuns possibly dating back to the seventeenth century.
And few people know that Canada’s second national anthem, “Hockey Night in Canada” was written by Dolores Claman in 1968.
However, there is still a vast and rich array of music by Canadian women composers, which is not yet fully known, widely heard or well enough distributed. The ACWC has an accumulated an Archive of material which is unique in Canada consisting of some of this music, recordings, LPs, tapes, interviews, correspondence, course materials, music and other ephemera which it would like to preserve, catalogue and eventually make it accessible to the public, to schools and to further research.
Collaborations.
Concert projects supported by ACWC, and often co-produced with other organizations, occur across Canada. Past collaborations include concerts in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Allegra Chamber Orchestra, the Canadian Music Centre, Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, SHHH!! Ensemble, Caution Tape Sound Collective, Emily Carr String Quartet, Ensemble Laude Women’s Choir, Sandbox Percussion, Ottawa Chamber Music Society, and more.
