Editorial

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With the arrival of fall, we mark the fourth year of our interdisciplinary arts magazine, La SCENA. Envisioning a forum for every artistic discipline, we created La SCENA to inform, provoke and spark dialogue among artists, students and art-lovers. We also celebrate the start of the fifteenth year of La Scena Musicale. We are pleased to welcome back Lucie Renaud to our Editorial team as our Content Editor. In this issue we have started new columns for amateur musicians and teachers, and we will be bringing out new features to better serve you, our readers. This year also marks an important new step in advancing our mission to promote music and the arts: starting with this September issue, La Scena Musicale/La SCENA will be available in new English-only and French-only electronic editions, which will become another privilege for subscribers—now readers can have access to all the texts in their language of choice. Please visit our award-winning website SCENA.org on September 8 to try out a sample. And watch this space as we announce more new initiatives leading up to our 15th anniversary in fall 2011.

Gracing our La SCENA cover this month is Quebec’s beloved dancer and choreographer, Marie Chouinard, whose innovative creations are often inspired by the works of great composers: Bach, Chopin, Stravinsky. Readers will also be treated to articles on Le regroupement québécois de la danse (celebrating their 25th anniversary), Otto Dix, the Théâtre du nouveau monde, the Grands Ballets’s production of Léonce et Léna, and a very exciting interview with director Denis Villeneuve, whose adaptation to film of Wajdi Mouawad’s play Incendies will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.

The Ensemble Pentaèdre is featured on the cover of La Scena Musicale, which includes profiles of the Romanian-Canadian accordionist Marin Nasturica and baritone Anthony Michaels Moore, who portrays Rigoletto at the Opéra de Montréal. We also continue our Mahler series with an article about the composer’s First Symphony. Our monthly Discovery CD (in partnership with XXI Records) for subscribers is Canadian mezzo-soprano Huguette Tourangeau.

To help you plan your arts and music going in the coming year, in our Fall Arts Preview section, our critics and experts have chosen the highlights of the coming season in music, dance, theatre, visual arts and film. As usual, our readers will also find insightful jazz features and reviews, reviews of CDs, books, and DVDs, the latest news items in the world of arts and music, and plenty more.

Don’t forget to look out for our annual La SCENA Arts and Music Directory, offering comprehensive listings of schools, amateur and professional choirs and ensembles, supply stores, high-end audio, agents and more in the fields of music, dance, theatre, film, and visual arts. The second edition came out last week in time for back-to-school.

Finally, it’s thanks to you, our readers, who, for the last 14 years, have helped shape this magazine into what it has become today—a vibrant, colourful celebration of classical music, jazz and the arts. Please show your continued support by contributing to our endowment fund campaign (which ends on November 30 and is matched by Placement Culture) to help ensure a fruitful 15th season for La Scena and beyond.

On behalf of the La Scena team, have a great 2010-11 season!