Notes - Editorial

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Publisher / Editor

The year 2004 was a tumultuous one for the classical music recording industry. While the major labels downsized, reshuffled and reissued, smaller labels took up the slack with new releases. This was the year the DVD market matured and legal downloads started to materialize at Archambaultzik.ca and iTunes.com.*

With the terrible Tsunami disaster bringing the year 2004 to a close, the flood of video images showed us again how small a place the world has become. In these times of grief, we remember music's ability to console.

La Scena Musicale begins 2005 with several changes to help serve our readers better. We are pleased to announce a new columnist; Gaétan Martel, former editor of Québec Micro, will take over the Audio section and will cover the increasingly important field of technology's relation to music. Our content has also been reorganized to create a regular page on World Music under the watchful eye of columnist Bruno Deschênes. Our Jazz section under the direction of Marc Chénard remains vibrant, while our Reviews section will continue to include DVDs as well as Books.

From the very beginning, we felt we could offer meaningful information to all of our readers, both novice and expert. With this in mind, we designed The Musician's Corner, aiming to unite musicians with the music public, and continuing to underscore music education. Our letters page and other features emphasize our commitment to provide a forum for open discussion in print and online.

Finally, in an effort to reach out to our readers outside central Montreal, La Scena Musicale will be made available at the newsstand for a cover price; this means that readers can now order the magazine from their local magazine dealer. We also continue to seek your help in promoting the magazine by offering a gift subscription to fellow music lovers.

The dedicated and humble team of staff and volunteers at La Scena Musicale remains motivated to translate the passion of music into words and set it on paper. On their behalf, I wish you a musical 2005.

*For more analysis of the year 2004 by journalists from around the world, visit La Scena Musicale Online's spotlight "2004 in Review" at http://2004inreview.scena.org