Canadian music library to open Victoria branch

Hub a boon to local teachers, students and performers

A branch of the largest Canadian music library in the world will give Victoria teachers, students and performers open access to the music of Canadian composers through a new initiative at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

The Victoria Creative Hub will serve as a satellite location of the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Music Centre, a free public lending library that specializes in promoting Canadian contemporary music. The national centre’s regional libraries in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax collectively offer the largest resource of Canadian music in the world.

“That library contains somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 scores and parts, so it’s a bit overwhelming if you’re stepping in from the outside,” said Sean Bickerton, director of the Canadian Music Centre in B.C.

“Our mission is to connect everyone to the ever-changing world of Canadian musical creativity.”

The Vancouver Island initiative is to be launched this morning during a ceremony at the conservatory’s library on Johnson Street, where the Victoria Creative Hub will be based. The Canadian Music Centre also announced it would relaunch its Composer-in-the-Classroom program, an outreach initiative within Greater Victoria schools.

Victoria composer Christopher Reiche is one of the thousands of Canadian composers whose work has found a wider audience of teachers and students through its association with the Canadian Music Centre.

“When you are trying to buy written music online, you don’t get to see the score in advance,” said Reiche, who will also serve as the hub’s Victoria engagement leader.

“You have to know that’s the piece you want. Here, you can peruse the shelves and get a sense of what is available for your instrument.”

The arrival of the Victoria Creative Hub is a big development for students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, the University of Victoria and Camosun College, among other institutions.

The key is to make music open and affordable for students, Reiche said.

“We’re trying to make the library more accessible to more people.”

The hard-copy offerings provided at the hub — sheet music, primarily — do not constitute a full-scale library, but students will have direct access to the wider Canadian Music Centre’s database.

Combined with a library of more than 70,000 titles maintained at the Victoria Conservatory of Music’s own library, from music to reference materials, students should no longer have to go without where Canadian classical music is concerned.

“That is fantastic for the students, as it fills in a lot of the Canadian-specific music needs we have here in the library,” said Elin Williams, librarian for the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

Bickerton, a UVic grad and former Victoria Symphony violinist, is glad to be making Canadian music collections and services more accessible to the province.

“The Canadian Music Centre is more active and more visible in more parts of the province than ever before.