Is there really too much classical music

The title in Arthur Kaptainis's column in Saturday's Montreal Gazette, Too much classical music, not enough audience, is misleading because the article only talks about too much classical music. I was thinking that my fellow classical music writer was going to launch into a discourse on the lack of music audiences in the concert hall (which may or may not be true), but instead, it was a lament on how many good events are scheduled at the same time, and how it is difficult for a music critic to cover them all. The title was probably created by an overzealous editor, so please don't blame Kaptainis.

While reading the column, I was hoping that Kaptainis would give a plug to the La Scena Musicale calendar. Each month our print calendar publishes over 500-600 listings of concerts, radio and TV programming, so that on any given day there are about 10 concerts happening in Montreal. Our online Canadian Classical Music Calendar (http://calendar.scena.org) lists over 7000 listings every year across Canada. Our Toronto rival The Whole Note also publishes about 400-500 listings per month. All this proves that classical music and especially classical music performance is alive and well, and probably exceeds live performances of all other music genres combined. Food for thought also in arguing again changes to CBC Radio 2.

Our online Canadian Classical Music Calendar is the most complete searchable events calendar of its kind in Canada. If you don't already have your event listed there, please don't hesitate to submit your event. It's free.

Over the summer, we are also working on getting our Arts calendar into our searchable database in time for the September back-to-school. If you are interesting in helping, send an email to info[at]scena.org.