Yesterday marked the first anniversary of my first post here. I set myself a goal of posting at least once every day, which became part of a new early-morning routine. I worried that the well of inspiration might run dry, but, even with time out for summer vacation, I managed more than 400 posts.
I realised that the well would never run dry. There's to much music and too many fascinating people creating and interpreting it to every worry about that.
In fact, there is far more going on than any individual can possibly serve. The classical music and opera scene in Toronto is larger and more diverse than ever, reaching a huge combined audience.
Walking home from the Star after writing my review for last night's Mariinsky Orchestra concert, I started a mental tally (I haven't checked these numbers with the presenters, by the way):
-Toronto Symphony: More than 100 regular concerts drawing an audience in excess of 200,000 people, plus its ambitious school concert programmmes.
-Canadian Opera Company: Seven seasonal productions that bring in an audience of about 140,000, plus school programmes, plus the free twice-weekly free concert series that draws a standing-room-only crowd to the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.
-Tafelmusik: 48 regular concerts good for at least 50,000 tickets, plus its school concerts. Then there is the orchestra's ambitious annual touring schedule, making them prime Toronto ambassadors.
-Koerner Hall, which will complete its first music season later this spring, the Corporation of Massey hall and Roy Thomson Hall, which also now runs the concert series at the Glenn Gould Studio, and Music Toronto at the Jane Mallett Theatre all have prestigious seasons.
-Then there are Opera Atelier, the University of Toronto's chamber music, faculty and student concerts, York University, the Women's Musical Club of Toronto, Esprit Orchestra, Soundstreams, the Music Gallery, I Furiosi, the Toronto Mednelssohn Choir, the Hannaford Street Silver Band, Sinfonia Toronto, Toronto Philharmonia, the Aldeburgh Connection, Mooredale Concerts, Off Centre Music Salon, and this is only the top of the list.
I'm positive that all of the professional activity alone must represent about $100 million in ticket sales and donations independent of government grants every year.
The better the music, the better the quality of international talents that are drawn to Toronto, the more international students come to study here, and the more local kids are inspired to develop a love of music.
I keep reading about shrinking audiences for classical music and opera but, in Toronto, right now, the audience is growing. It's something to celebrate and build even further.
At the same time, the merciless economics of the traditional media world mean that, in a metropolitan area of more than 5 million people which has three English-language daily broadsheets, one paid daily tabloid and a couple of free daily commuter papers, there is one full-time, staff critic whose primary beat is classical music and opera.
The Globe and Mail officially has a music critic on staff, Robert Everett-Green, but his writing appears in the paper only once in a while. There are freelancers who occasionally fill in, too. The National Post gave up on classical music coverage a while ago. The Sun's John Colbourn covers opera as the paper's theatre critic, but they don't have a critic for classical music.
Anyone looking at the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Sun over the course of any given month would conclude that classical music is not a significant enough part of Toronto culture to deserve regular mention.
Imagine what my superiors must conclude when they survey this media landscape and try to find obvious ways of cutting costs at the Star -- something that has become an imperative, not just an option.
Meanwhile, thousands of Toronto musicians practice, teach, perform and travel every day. Every day, at the very least several hundred, but more likely several thousand people go to an opera or a concert in this amazing city.
New opera houses and concert halls -- for which individuals have donated tens of millions of dollars -- do not open in cities where classical music is a dying or less-than-fully-relevant art form.
So why do most of our city's newspaper's treat it the way they do?
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