This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
Welcome to the new La Scena Musicale in full evolution! You hold in your hands your magazine in a new all-colour, all-glossy format. It’s a key step in elevating our magazine to the rank of a high-end publication, worthy of the prestige and reputation that La Scena has garnered over its 21-year history.
Stéphane Pilon of the University of Montreal provoked the idea in the summer of 2016. He admitted that he found the newsprint of La Scena’s first 21 years to be rather dingy, making the magazine appear cheap rather than matching its prestige. We looked at the different options for switching to glossy. If we went all-glossy with the same number of copies, we would face significant added costs. This is a big risk for any non-profit.
Ultimately, it was a risk that our Board accepted. We felt the change would offer multiple benefits: for the music community, pages of greater worth; for readers, more colour, contrast and ease of reading; for advertisers, gleaming adverts; and for publishers, more advertising and subscriptions. We believe that the new format will finance itself through advertising, donations and subscriptions. We give a special thanks to our many advertisers and partners for supporting this transformation.
Spare that dime!
With this issue, we launch a fundraising and subscription campaign. We hope that at least five donors will join our Signature Club with a minimum $1000 donation, and we hope that at least 100 of you will become new subscribers.
More high-quality articles
We decided to launch the new La Scena in our first national issue of the season, with 50,000 copies divided equally between separate English and French editions (double that of our usual bilingual edition of 25,000 copies). It also contains our 18th Guide to Higher Education. The subject of the French cover story, violinist Alexandre Da Costa, shares his thoughts on music education, while our English cover artist, mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, recounts her surprising path to success.
The new La Scena is part of our 2017–18 editorial plan to publish more high-quality content; our aim is to grow the number of pages by 15% to 20%. This November issue is right on course, offering a wide variety of themes. To celebrate Canada 150, we continue our series on great Canadian singers with a look at mezzo-sopranos. In addition to Platts, Pierre Chénier gives us his view of four of Canada’s top mezzos, while new contributor Charles Geyer makes Cinderella magical with Julie Boulianne. We meet Eva Gauthier in part I of Nadia Turbide’s historical essay. Choral music is represented by a fresh look at Handel’s Messiah and performances of Bach’s Christmas music.
Music is also about sound and listening. This issue contains our first annual special on Audio, with no fewer than nine articles, discussing the technology and the industry.
The La SCENA Arts Magazine returns in the French edition with a 7-page special on Dance. We celebrate the 20th anniversary of Danse Danse and offer interviews with Ivan Cavallari — incoming artistic director of Les Grands Ballets — and Frédérick Gravel. We also look at dance education and visit the new Espace Danse in the Wilder building. A double-page spread on photographer Pierre Dury rounds out our Arts coverage.
Our regular features — music coverage, CD reviews, Jazz column, Regional Calendar, concerts picks, along with our recently introduced Concert Reviews — are now in sparkling colour.
More content means more new contributors and collaborations, and this issue begins a partnership with Jenna Simeonov of the Schmopera blog. As well, our French edition includes the 2017 edition of Entracte, the revue of the Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Québec.
Our magazine is your magazine
From the very beginning the La Scena team was driven by insatiable curiosity, and this is still true today. In an era of instant information from the Internet, we still feel the need for curated content, which you will find in abundance in our print magazine. Further, all of our content is available on our website, translated into both official languages for our paid subscribers, making La Scena unique among the independent publications that serve Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Our website mySCENA.org continues our 21-year tradition of offering news and an event calendar in both languages, and our Facebook page is regularly updated with the latest news and video picks. In January next year we will introduce further tools to enhance mySCENA.org.
Above all, our magazine, La Scena, is your magazine. It was created to serve you, our readers, to inform and to educate and to promote music and the arts. Let us know how you like the new format and content; give us your suggestions and requests for future features. As always we welcome new collaborators and volunteers: writers, translators, editors, subscribers, donors and advertisers. Our doors are open.
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
