Introducing Picanto.ca, Canada’s digital platform for creative music content. The Picanto.ca mission is to nurture, support and showcase Canadian creative talent at home and abroad. Picanto.ca brings together a world of new and uncommon music from diverse genres through music-video offerings, documentaries, educational videos and live-streaming events.
- a hub for the Canadian creative artists and the music community
- a place for discovery, created by and for Canadian music lovers
- a curated selection of diverse genres and traditions such as jazz, orchestral music, experimental and improvised music, sound art, and cross-cultural music.
As Picanto.ca develops, we will be adding a music education and documentaries section, and through interaction with our artist content partners, new ideas, new categories, new elements will be added to the site. It is very much a community work in progress.
For Picanto.ca to work and to increase the national and international listenership of Canadian music, we want to collaborate with the everyone, starting with Canadian music creators. So – explore the site, sign up as a viewer, or, if you are creating new productions, sign up as a content partner. Propose videos, send us feedback via our feedback form. We are here to help everyone discover, listen and play Canadian creative music.
“The idea is simple. By working together, creating a large, comprehensive, well-designed, professionally-managed Canadian creative music platform, our chances of reaching our target public are greatly increased.”
Discover. Listen. Play…TOGETHER
SAVE THE DATE — Thursday, October 14th (7:30pm EDT) for a virtual, musical, discovery party to introduce Picanto.ca, Canada’s digital platform for contemporary music creators. Co-hosted by Céline Peterson and Marie-Annick Béliveau, we will celebrate contemporary music in Canada with an intriguing sampling of video presentations, special guests and information about the platform and its services. With this celebration and the Picanto.ca platform, we can all engage in supporting the music community in post-pandemic recovery.
At Discover. Listen. Play…TOGETHER, we will celebrate the profound value that creating music has for bringing community together, for healing and for joy.
RSVP
About the Hosts
Céline Peterson is a producer, host, social media manager, and artist representative, and has worked with a who’s who of internationally-acclaimed jazz artists including Robi Botos, Dr. Oliver Jones and Dr. Dave Young. She is also an Ambassador for the Youth4Music program at the Coalition for Music Education in Canada, and has traveled across the globe in support of jazz music and artist advocacy. “Céline Peterson is a brave and articulate champion for jazz. A valiant writer and speaker who works lovingly and tirelessly for the cause of dedicated musicians. Her brilliant mind and deep heart motivate her outspoken support for the present and future of music education. With honest humility and courage, she speaks the truth of the immeasurable importance for our evolving society to realize that jazz is a precious art form for us to invest ourselves in and to treat with care, dignity and devotion. I’m grateful for Céline’s encouragement of my efforts, because her sincerity won’t ever allow her to “pretend” where the sanctity of music is concerned. Céline is the real deal and the international jazz community is blessed by her humanity, soul and voice.” – Benny Green, Pianist, Composer, and Educator.
Marie-Annick Béliveau has been active on the Montreal musical stage for over 20 years. Her recent performance of Scelsi’s solo “performance opera” Les Chants du Capricorne, under the direction of Pauline Vaillancourt, was unanimously praised by critics, earning her an Opus Award for the Musical event of the year from the Conseil québécois de la musique. In 2021 she will become the new artistic director of Chants Libres, Montrealbased vocal creation company founded by Pauline Vaillancourt 30 years ago. She has made a name for herself as an accomplished performer of the contemporary repertoire, premiering over 30 works in Canada and Europe. She can regularly be heard on CBC and has made several award-winning recordings. Equally active on the classical stage, she performs as a soloist with several ensembles and has participated in many soundtracks, such as The Red Violin and Paul à Québec. Marie-Annick is also very active in her community, as a teacher in charge of classical vocal instruction at UQAM, at Camp musical Père Lindsay and CAMMAC music center, and as a performer for La Société pour les Arts en Milieux de Santé.
7x Picanto Festival
7x Picanto supports the creation of seven new video productions to be premiered on the Picanto.ca website. Each of the chosen productions receives an investment of $5,000 in video production fees.
The submissions represented a remarkably wide range of creative musicians from across the country.
In the end, the jury picked projects that they believe represent the scope, vision and imagination of creative music in Canada. But, the overwhelming demand for our first Call makes it clear that there is a great need and demand for funding like this. It is our hope that we will be able to repeat this festival in the future.
We congratulate the chosen projects, which come from a variety of provinces and musical categories.
We plan to release the video premieres late in 2021.
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About Picanto.ca – Discover. Listen. Play.
Picanto.ca is a digital platform dedicated to a shared passion for music that is outside the mainstream. The Picanto.ca mission is to nurture, support and showcase Canadian creative talent at home and abroad. It is a hub for the contemporary music community, connecting by reaching beyond the short-form and song-based music that is already available everywhere else — it is a place for discovery, created by and for Canadian music lovers serving an audience that has been underserved for far too long. Picanto offers music fans direct access to a curated selection of diverse genres and traditions such as jazz, orchestral music, experimental and improvised music, sound art, and cross-cultural music.
Picanto.ca is a project of the Canadian Music Centre. Development of the platform was funded by a grant from the Canada Council’s Digital Strategy Fund, in collaboration with Le Vivier and other Canadian composers and creative music practitioners.
