Donate
Donations to the BSO can be made online through the Canada Helps link below.
Revenue from ticket sales accounts for only a portion of the Orchestra’s income needed to offer our various services and programs. Donations from corporations, foundations, government agencies, and caring individuals are critical to our operations. We sincerely appreciate all donations, big and small, because without them, we could not continue with our efforts to enrich our community generally and all the people we touch directly.
Non-directed donations give us the flexibility to take advantage of your generosity where it is most needed. However, we recognize that some donors have a particular area of interest in the Orchestra organization. Therefore, we have created three specific areas to which donations can be easily directed: Young People’s Education, New Music Commissioning, and Orchestra Chair Sponsoring.
Young People's Education
Small Ensemble In-School Program
Full Orchestra In-School Program
Instrumental Specialist In-School Master Clases
New Music Commissioning
Orchestra Chair Sponsoring
Young People’s Education
Musical growth and education can be a stimulating life-long process, best begun at an early age by learning some of the basic structures and conventions of the musical language. That core concept is the motivating philosophy behind the initiatives the Brantford Symphony is undertaking for the 2009 – 2010 school year and beyond. We hope to plant the seed of curiosity about music, of any and all types, in as many young minds as we can, through the performances of live professional orchestral musicians.
We have three main in-school educational projects planned for next year. Each has a different attraction and focus for the students and the educators in our area schools.
Small Ensemble In-School program
Bringing an energetic and educational performance right into each school, using a small group of instrumentalists, is one of the most stimulating and cost-effective ways of engaging students. Typically, a few classrooms at a time will be brought into an area like the school gymnasium, be seated around the group of four or five presenters, and be encouraged to open their minds to some of the building blocks of music while listening to a variety of musical selections.
The performance program the Brantford Symphony is planning to send out to the schools is a production that is newly conceived and arranged. The feature of our production that sets it apart from the traditional small-group presentation used by most other orchestras is the use of a professional actor. This actor’s role will be to talk about the musical ideas our educational consultants have identified as being important parts of the Ontario education curriculum, while engaging and entertaining the students in ways that only a trained and experienced actor can accomplish. Our expectation and our goal is to make these presentations lively, engaging and fun, yet packed full of musical education (even though the students won’t realize it at the time!).
Funds allocated to this program are needed to cover the costs of items such as composing and arranging of the music, script writing and editing, rehearsal time and space, and preparation and production of Teacher’s Guides for the production. Once the program is ready for performance, the cost of presenting the shows in the schools would be borne by the schools and/or students themselves.
Full Orchestra In-School program
This program is a performance by the full Brantford Symphony in three locations in the region: Brantford, Caledonia, and Simcoe. Students will be bussed from area schools to attend the concerts during school hours.
The performances will be designed to show and demonstrate various instruments in a symphony orchestra and the smaller families they each belong to. Musical selections will be performed by some of the individual instruments, each of the families of instruments, and of course the result when you put all the families together. The music selections will be drawn from classic orchestra repertoire, whether it was written for a monarch’s court three hundred years ago, or for a popular movie a couple summers ago.
Funds allocated to this program will help bring the Brantford Symphony into the three selected "hub" schools for one educational performance of approximately one hour in each location. Area primary/junior students will be bussed to the host school. The funds are needed to pay our professional musicians for one full rehearsal and three performances. Joining the BSO would be the members of the BYSO, taking the place of their usual November educational concert in the Sanderson Centre. The students coming to the performances pay a very modest amount to attend.
Instrumental Specialist In-School Master Classes
Master Classes are a very focussed education opportunity for students of a particular instrument. One of our orchestra members, each with decades of learning and experience, goes into a school with an instrumental program and conducts a lesson with a few students of the same instrument in the presence of all students studying that instrument. This is a very effective method of teaching a larger group of musicians, practiced in all advanced music schools around the world.
Funds allocated to this program will help bring the Master Class program to all area schools that request it. The funds would be used to cover the costs of our professional musicians travelling to the schools and conducting a one to two hour Class.
New Music Commissioning
All composers, throughout the history of Western music, have relied on generous benefactors for their livelihood. Centuries ago, a composer might have been given full-time employment by a court or church in return for a continuous supply of new music. Or, the composer might have relied on a steady stream of freelance or contract work either as the only source of his income, or to supplement his teaching or performing income. Today, the situation is not very different, except that organizations like orchestras or choirs, not just individuals or companies, are frequently commissioning composers to write new music.
The term “New Music” or “Newly-Composed Music” today has become somewhat tarnished. Many people automatically assume they won’t like the new work, and, it is true, there has been a good deal of music written in the past few decades that hasn’t done much to change that perception. However, there are at least three good reasons to continue to encourage new music to be written.
First of all, music is a living art form. Unlike the visual arts, the creation of music must take place again and again; besides an audio recording of a performance, once it has happened, it can never be examined again. And the life of music must be given new material, new ideas to keep it alive, so that it doesn’t stagnate in performances of only “musical museum” pieces.
Secondly, there have been some wonderful pieces of new music composed in recent times. No, it doesn’t sound like Mozart, but Beethoven’s music didn’t sound at all like Bach’s either. Music history is full of suspicion and dislike of new musical ideas, but looking back, we can find many masterpieces which weren’t much appreciated at the time of their writing. Did you know, at one time the idea of adding a mirroring line at the fifth to a chant (parallel organum) was considered blasphemy and the work of the devil? Even such a simple departure from “the norm” was met with criticism and derision. Our expectations and tastes haven’t changed much since then.
And the third point is that throughout Western music history, there have always been pretty awful pieces of music written. What we can find of music written hundreds of years ago is just the “best” stuff, the “Hit Parade” of greatest works that have stood the test of time and changing tastes. If the composers of those masterpieces had not received a commission to write them, we would today be that much the poorer for its absence. Some of today’s commissions will not stand the test of time, but perhaps one that the Brantford Symphony commissions will be a real gem, frequently performed for many years to come.
Perhaps you have an interest in continuing the tradition of encouraging new commissions. If you do, you can help make it happen by making a donation to the BSO’s New Music Commissioning fund. You will be given proper recognition in our concert programs, and you will receive periodic updates regarding the status of the fund and any projects that are being considered or undertaken in the future. And, you will be held in very high regard by the Orchestra and by our talented Canadian composers.
Orchestra Chair Sponsoring
Perhaps you played the trumpet in high school, and you’ve always loved hearing another trumpeter play extremely well. Perhaps you never played the cello, but you’ve always loved the sound of it. Or, perhaps you were always put in the back of the second violin section, and you have a special affinity (sympathy?) for the people at the back of the seconds. (Did you know, it’s much more difficult to play at the back of a string section than it is to be up front in the middle of the orchestra?). Whatever your reason, perhaps you or a group you belong to would like to sponsor a particular Chair or position in the Brantford Symphony for a concert or for an entire season. It’s easy to do! Just contact the BSO office to discuss the possibilities. Recognition of your generosity would be included in our concert programs, and would look something like “The Third Trombone Chair for tonight’s performance has been sponsored by John Doe”.