This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Français (French)
As 2026 approaches, I would like to update you on the latest developments at La Scena Musicale magazine and share our plans for celebrating our milestone 30th anniversary next year.
2025 Highlights
This year, we published six national print magazine issues, each available in both English and French. With a talented team based in major cities across Canada (from Montreal to Vancouver) and in Europe (London and Paris), La Scena Musicale is proud to showcase Canadian and international artists and organizations, providing a platform to share their stories and promote their artistic activities. Cover artists for 2025 included Jordan de Souza, Clemens Schuldt, Thomas Hampson, Samuel Mariño, Elisabeth St-Gelais and Michael Bridge.
Last autumn, our piano special featured Leif Ove Andsnes and Michael McMahon. Our woodwinds issue put a spotlight on Ensemble Caprice and Autour de la Flûte, while our early music/baroque issue promoted The Tallis Scholars and Jakub Józef Orliński.
To engage our readers further, La Scena Musicale introduced the Art of Living section to give deeper insight into artists’ lives (their favourite city haunts, recipes, and fashion), along with a themed word search puzzle just for fun!
Our website (mySCENA.org) offers additional content, including the most comprehensive events calendar in Canada that allows artists to be seen and be heard all year round. Concert and album reviews plus a highlights column, news and special interest items as well as our weekly newsletter help keep readers updated. To complement our print and digital offerings, we launched our La Scena Radio Internet platform where musical content related to our articles and reviews are available.
La Scena Musicale Magazine Turns 30
La Scena Musicale will be celebrating its 30th anniversary starting September 2026!
In 1996, I created La Scena Musicale magazine with the mission to make music and the arts, particularly the live concert-going experience, widely accessible to all. Within nine months, in 1997, the non-profit organization La Scène Musicale was founded to administer the magazine. The organization gained charitable status in 2001, enabling it to issue tax receipts to donors.
For 30 years, our team has worked tirelessly to bear witness to the cultural life in Quebec, Canada and to some extent, internationally. Today, La Scena Musicale remains the largest bilingual (English and French) classical music print and online magazine in North America with a print distribution of 60,000 copies per issue. Through the years, world-renowned talent such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Renée Fleming, Thomas Hampson, James Ehnes and Bruce Liu have graced the magazine’s covers.
La Scena Musicale’s ongoing initiatives are designed to be thoughtful and inclusive. To promote music education, La Scena Musicale distributes free magazine copies to schools, libraries and arts venues. For the past 15 years, its community outreach includes the annual Singing Valentines where singers give personalized serenades, and offer free songs to seniors.
In 2026, on the occasion of La Scena Musicale’s milestone 30th anniversary, a series of book magazines will be produced on Giacomo Puccini, Gustav Mahler and Handel’s Messiah to coincide with recent and upcoming landmark anniversaries. The goal is to highlight the historical significance of these great artists and their music. A crowdfunding campaign is planned for each to help cover production costs.
A Labour of Love
For you to hold a copy of a La Scena Musicale magazine in your hands there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work. Pre-production involves planning and scheduling for interviews, attendance of concerts to do reviews, and meticulous collecting of upcoming event details.
Based on a chosen theme, the small dedicated group of writers, editors, translators, proofreaders, graphists and salespeople meet often to organize and prioritize content. The week before the magazine goes to print, there are long days and sleepless nights fine-tuning the issue (in English and French!), so that the final pages can go to press on time. Once the issue is published, it is posted online, and the distribution team mails/delivers the magazine to subscribers and to venues across Canada. This whole process is ongoing and dynamic, requiring the team to always be working ahead for future issues.
Government funding for the arts remains limited. In its first 20 years, La Scène Musicale was not eligible for arts council operating grants simply because it distributes its magazines for free. During the last 10 years, the organization still has not benefitted from these grants because of ever-changing government criteria and increasingly insufficient funds.
For three decades, unlike other Canadian arts publications, La Scena Musicale has remarkably existed on a shoestring budget and depended mainly on autonomous funds (largely advertising sales) which represents over 60% of the organization’s total revenues. This is not sustainable. Current inflation and economic uncertainty, along with growing competition on the Internet seriously threaten La Scena Musicale’s future. To survive, it must raise more funds from other sources, namely through fundraising campaigns and subscription drives.
As La Scena Musicale magazine turns 30, please keep supporting our mission to promote music and the arts, to make it accessible to all. If the existence of La Scena Musicale matters to you, make a tangible impact by:
- Volunteering (fundraising, editing, translating, …)
- Making a purchase from the La Scena Musicale Boutique
- Buying a subscription to the magazine
- Donating to La Scène Musicale
- Cash (SEE attached page on Quebec’s additional tax credit for major cultural donations)
- Securities (stocks and bonds)
- Making a gift of a lifetime through legacy giving in your Will or Estate Plan. This kind of giving may also help offset taxes on your estate. If you want to support La Scène Musicale in your Will or Estate Plan, please contact Wah Keung Chan ([email protected] / 514-815-0465).
A heartfelt thank you to loyal fans of La Scena Musicale who read the magazine, consult our website, subscribe, volunteer and donate year after year. With everyone’s combined generosity we can continue to inform, to inspire and to connect for years to come!
On behalf of La Scène Musicale’s devoted staff and volunteers, I wish you all a joyous holiday season and a hopeful New Year!
With gratitude,
Wah Keung Chan
Founder, Editor and Publisher, La Scène Musicale
P.S. You can make a donation or take out a subscription at www.mySCENA.org or by calling us at 514-948-2520 x 3.
A donation made now will be acknowledged with a tax receipt in February 2026.
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Français (French)
