I wear a number of hats in the music community. I'm primarily a composer and musician, but work as critic, curator/presenter, and publicist.

Just as COVID-19 was ramping up, American imprint Orange Milk Records released my sixth full-length recording entitled My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell digitally and on LP/CD,  composed in my home studio by overdubbing my own performances on a wide variety of instruments. On the writing end of things, I'm a regular contributor with Musicworks Magazine and my work has also appeared in publications such as the Wire and  Exclaim! I've been the guest curator of the Canadian Music Centre's CMC Presents Series for the past two seasons, and have also devised programs for Soundstreams, the Music Gallery, New Adventures in Sound Art, and my own independent productions.

Publicity is the newest facet of my career, but it is expanding rapidly. Most of the work I've been doing has provided support to Canadian artists and events within my orbit.  

For the most part I've actually been very fortunate in terms of the impact of COVID-19 on my various endeavours thus far.  In a funny way, I feel as though it has created a receptive climate for recorded music and that's had a positive impact on the critical reception of my own record. That's been tremendously heartening. 

There are a few things that have been suspended: a collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Gary Kirkham and vocalists Bó Bardos and Pam Patel;  Yvonne Ng has been working on a new full-length quintet dance entitled Wéi since 2017 and the plan had been to premiere it in the coming half-year. Thin Edge New Music Collective and I have been working (very slowly) on an album of my chamber music with Jean Martin at the controls. We've already recorded over half and hour of music, and it would be nice to wrap it up. 

There's not really much that can be done to prepare this work in any way, except to remain positive, and I've been doing my utmost in that domain. 

Instead, I've been continuing with other work of various kinds, publicizing new and forthcoming recordings by various artists, mixing some intriguing new recordings from multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher that will no doubt surface, and been writing various grants for clients. 

I also recently started a solo piece for baroque cello for Elinor Frey that poses an interesting challenge. As a cellist myself, I'm trying to imagine the music away from the cello as much as possible, to prevent my own habits and limitations on the instrument from seeping through.  I want to be writing for her, her interpretive gifts, and her instrument, rather than merely transcribing myself.

Apart from that: various studio pieces, including a set where everything is recorded through those cheap humbucker pickups that one mounts in acoustic guitars for amplification.  They only respond to the vibration of magnetic metals, which makes for a strange cocktail of serious restriction and peculiar sonic possibilities—everything from a Slinky to barbecue skewers, from tape measures to steel wool.

To find me: My website www.nickstorring.ca offers the most thorough overview; my Soundcloud serves as a kind of audio scrapbook: https://soundcloud.com/nick_storring; and my commercial recordings are all available from my Bandcamp: http://nickstorring.bandcamp.com

I am Sterling Beckwith, PhD.  Former singer and conductor,  retired professor of music at York University. 

My active musical involvement has for some time been limited to reading about, reflecting on,  and occasionally sampling the incredible richness and variety of our local music scene.  The present issue of The WholeNote demonstrates once again how much we owe to this magazine's indefatigable support   –  as catalogue,  catalyst,  and cattle-prod – for all this activity.  Without it, I doubt such an impressive  level of quality and diversity could have been so soon attained.  Whether, for how long, and to what extent our various musical lives can survive a total lockdown is anybody's guess,  but today I'm feeling optimistic.....

Neither of my two lifetime musical projects has yet been interrupted:

1)  Bridging the language and culture gap for young Canadian performers,  by providing some of my favorite European vocal works with singable new English texts.   Done so far:

Brahms: Liebeslieder-Walzer Op. 52. Monteverdi: Ballo delle ingrate. Rimsky-Korsakov:  Mozart & Salieri. Schuetz: Johannes-Passion; Weihnachts-Historie. And most recently (while self-isolating)  Shostakovich: Babi Yar (not yet performed).

2)  Expanding the everyday teaching and learning of music, currently heavily slanted towards performance training, to include thoughtfully-designed computer-assisted exercises in composing,  as well as guided listening to more than the latest pop hits. For the latter, I am actively looking for individual and institutional partners, and taking steps to insure that software development work can continue.

I can still be reached via my York U email address: beckwith@yorku.ca

I’m an arts publicist specializing in classical music, speaking here for myself (something I don’t often get to do!).

Since  COVID-19 hit, I have had to let go of publicizing three of five May events on my calendar because they have been cancelled outright. The other two of those May events have been postponed till the fall: the Upper Canada Choristers’ concert Inti Ukana: A Latin American Tapestry, has been rescheduled to October; and the International Resource Centre for Performing Artists is rescheduling its performance of Ten Singing Stars: The New Generation till the fall as well.  The biggest of the cancelled events will take place in 2021, we hope as originally programmed for 2020.

 At the moment, the basic publicity materials are prepared for when the world is ready to roll. We will just have to change the date and update any other info that might have been revised. Meanwhile, I am doing some writing and editing for a couple of clients and dealing with other personal projects that have been put on the back burner for years – like cleaning up my office!

I’m at lalitwack@rogers.com, and am on Facebook and Twitter.

I’m the artistic & managing director of The Musical Stage Company which I founded 16 years ago. We are Canada’s largest and leading not-for-profit theatre company dedicated to the development of musical theatre.

Fortunately there is nothing that we have let go of completely yet. Several things had to be postponed though.Once circumstances allow, we will be able to reinstitute all of the programming that was lost. Of greatest note, we are 100% committed to the world premiere of the new musical Kelly v. Kelly by Sara Farb and Britta Johnson which has been in development for the last several years and was set to premiere in May.

We have increased the number of workshops right now for the development of new musicals. We have found that these non-public workshops work fairly well in an online space. If we can use this time to strengthen the new Canadian musicals that are on the horizon, and ensure that they have a relevance and resonance in this current time, then I imagine a bright future ahead. We are also engaged in very complex risk planning to make sure that The Musical Stage Company is well positioned to not only survive, but nimbly adapt to whatever needs greet us on the other side of this crisis.

Visit our website at musicalstagecompany.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (MusicalStageCo)

I’ve pinned us on the map  to our office; it is fairly central to all of the spots we work in.

Mezzo-soprano, speaking on behalf of myself.

Gone, or up in the air, since COVID-19 hit:  the final week of shows for I Call myself Princess at the Globe Theatre in Regina;  Kingston Symphony Beethoven 9; and Turn of the Screw with Opera 5 in Toronto. My sailboat can’t launch this month. News still pending on my debut with the Welsh National Opera, touring Britain and Dubai.

Sailing will definitely happen again someday. But I do not have any control on how companies proceed with their programming once it is safe to do so again, so I cannot say whether I’ll be able to follow through on any of the postponed or cancelled engagements. Still very much crossing my fingers for Wales …

So in the meanwhile,  I have been playing Beethoven and Debussy on the piano daily. Attending weekly meetings via video-conference as a board member of Opera.ca. Witnessing how opera companies across Canada are dealing with the crisis and planning for the future. Advocating for inclusion of more artist voices so that our new reality on the other side of this works for administrators, as well as for creators and performers. Gathering inspiration by listening to recordings of wonderful singers, watching interviews with some of them on YouTube and remembering the most influential teachers I’ve been fortunate to have learned from. Like a bit of a self-prescribed masterclass in my own home.

For people reading this who want to find me,  Instagram and Twitter are where I check in daily. I am @missprill on both. I do post on Facebook as Marion Newman, but that is mostly upcoming gigs so I’m not sure when I might appear there next!