Marilyn's Message

MISSION STATEMENT

To develop, support and expand the careers of classical, world and roots music artists internationally
To create performance opportunities for MGAM artists
To offer presenters in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia a choice of high quality classical, world and roots artists
To book MGAM artists in soft-seat venues and at festivals
To negotiate fees that are fair and respectful
To help artists navigate the challenges of the current marketplace, and educate MGAM artists about the realities of doing business today including the understanding and use of new technologies
To create touring projects that will stimulate our artists’ creativity that will appeal to the public
To teach our artists the importance of reaching out to the audience in a way that stimulates interest in live performance and demonstrates clearly that live performances offer something that cannot be experienced by listening to CDs, MP3s, watching DVDs, etc.

HISTORY

MGAM was established in 1978. We have created, maintained and expanded careers for some of Canada's leading artists: Rivka Golani, Anton Kuerti, Robert Silverman, Scott St. John, Guy Few, James Sommerville, Richard Raymond, Joseph Petric, Moshe Hammer, Judy Loman, Jeanne Baxstresser, Jean Stilwell, Amadeus, Peter Appleyard, George Gao, Kiyoshi Nagata, Ken Whiteley, Genticorum, Penny Lang, Millennium, Victor Feldbrill, Srul Irving Glick, etc.

We have successfully completed projects for James Campbell that included finding him a long-term manager in the UK. We did the publicity and promotion for Nexus when they made their Carnegie Hall Debut. We arranged the first Ontario tour for I Musici de Montreal and toured a special project with Rivka Golani, Peter Shenkman and the international oboe super-star, Heinz Holliger that was arranged by Costa Pilivachi during his tenure at Music Toronto. We served as consultant for Stephan Cera when he did the artistic planning for Livent. In this capacity we curated the Jewish component of his world music programming and his presentation of the Millennium Ensemble.

We arranged all the print advertising for CBC Records and we hosted and created PR events in Toronto for cellist, Matt Haimovitz, Kathleen Battle, Frans Bruggen, Charles Dutoit, Mitsuko Uchida and many more for PolyGram Canada.

We have booked Canadians with the Boston (USA), BBC (UK) & St. Louis (USA), ORF (Austria), Radio Hilversum (Holland), Tokyo Metropolitan (Japan), RTBF (Belgium) Haifa (Israel), Baltimore (USA), Montpellier (France) symphonies.

MGAM artists have appeared at Merkin Hall and the 92nd St.Y (NYC), The Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Wigmore Hall (London), the Royal Albert Hall (London), the Lockenhaus (Austria) and Edinburgh (Scotland) Festivals, Mostly Mozart Festival in N.Y (USA), The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, The Great Lakes Folk Festival in Michigan, The Newport Chamber Music Festival (Rhode Island), The Cape and Islands Chamber Music Festival (Cape Cod), the Kuhmo Festival (Finland), the Cervantino Festival (Mexico), the Lotus Festival in Bloomington (IN), The World Music Festival Chicago, the Madison World Music Festival and many more. Our artists have toured frequently in the US, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Hungary, Belgium, The Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey, Greece, Russia, Israel, Singapore and China and Japan.

In Canada MGAM artists have been among to elite artists of the country. They have played with literally every symphony orchestra in the country, appeared at every chamber music festival, every major concert hall and series, nearly every folk festival and world music festival in the country. They have done outreach to smaller communities and schools on a regular basis.

MGAM has worked on commissioning projects for our artists with many of Canada’s leading composers including: Srul Irving Glick, R. Murry Shafer, Michael Colgrass, Jaques Hetu, Denis Gougeon, Louis Applebaum, Brian Cherney, Malcolm Forsyth, Harry Freedman, Chris Paul Harmon, Otto Joachim, Marjan Mozrtich, Jean Papineau-Couture, Oscar Morawetz and more.

In the 2004-5 season MGAM presented a series of concerts in a Toronto loft space that attracted major print media attention. We did this to provide performance opportunities for our artists and to present live classical, jazz and world music concerts within the Queen St. West arts oriented community. We presented these concerts in partnership with Toronto abstract painter and arts philanthropist, Ben Woolfitt. In the summers of 2005 and 2006 MGAM collaborated with our long-term violinist, Michael Guttman to mount a chamber music festival in early July in Toronto. The festival was a great success with the press and the music making was outstanding. Some of the Canadian artists who participated were Joel Quarrington, James McKay, James Campbell, Moshe Hammer, Rivka Golani, Judy Loman, Susan Hoeppner, Richard Raymond, Louis-Philippe Marsolais, Doug Perry and Yegor Dyachkov. We are currently working on ideas that we hope will stimulate larger numbers of people to attend this festival. Once we have devised a formula that seems as if it will work, we will resume. Funding is in place and there is no deficit after the first two seasons.

MGAM has placed artists with agents in the UK, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium and the US.

The discography of MGAM artists past and present numbers in the hundreds; our work with the CBC and foreign media is on going.

“ Smooth speech and deception are forbidden to us.
Our words must not differ from our thoughts;
the inner and outer person must be the same.
What is in the heart should be on the lips.
We are forbidden to deceive anyone, Jew or non-Jew,
about anything. For example, one must not urge food
on another knowing that the other cannot eat it.
One must not offer gifts that cannot be accepted.
A storekeeper opening a bottle in order to sell its
contents must not pretend to be opening it in honour
of a particular person, and the like....
Honest speech, integrity and a pure heart -
that is what is required of us." - Moses Maimonides

ROLE IN THE ARTS COMMUNITY

MGAM has always taken a leadership role in the arts community. For many years Marilyn Gilbert was engaged by the then Department of External Affairs to represent Canada at Midem in France with the particular mandate of exposing the European market to Canadian classical artists. Through Marilyn’s efforts artists such as Sophie Rolland, James Campbell and Rivka Golani all had high profile showcases in the mid-eighties that helped to develop their European careers.

Marilyn has served on juries and panels for the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, FACTOR, CINARS, ISPA, and OCFF. She is currently serving on the executive board of CCI. Our collaborations with Canadian industry partners continue to be very important. We share booths at trade shows with other companies and share our contacts whenever possible in an on-going effort to create a healthy rapport of collaboration with colleagues that allows us all to be more productive.

MGAM has been active in attempting to create cooperative projects with Canadian colleagues for over 30 years. We were active in, CAAM, the organization that for many years represented the management industry in Canada. We were instrumental in founding Front Street Artists Management in the early nineties that formed an umbrella company for MGAM, Robert Missen Artists Management, Renee Simmons Artists Management and Kids Entertainment. In the past we worked on creative projects with Peter Sever the founder of GAMI, with Barbara Scales, Richard Paul, Hart-Murdoch, Renee Simmons and more. We currently collaborate with Heidi Fleming at the Famgroup in an effort to expand the careers of Genticorum and Penny Lang to include soft-seat venues and high profile festivals.

Marilyn Gilbert has always made herself available to guide managers newer to the field. She has advised Annick-Patrice Carriere at Station Bleu, Marie-Catherine Lapointe and Richard Paul most recently. Having received similar mentorship in the past, Marilyn is dedicated to passing on her expertise and knowledge to create a stronger management community in Canada.

MGAM has always concentrated on the Canadian market first, then the US market and Europe. We have begun to expand our activities into Asia and intend to make a long-term commitment to that market where there is currently so much activity and interest in classical music. As will be evidenced later on in this grant request our intention is to use this program to enable us to enable this goal.

With thirty years of constant outreach on behalf of our artists and company we are well known and highly respected as one of the smaller international companies that plays an active role in the industry. Presenters in Canada know us, seek us out for programming ideas and book our artists regularly. US presenters work with us easily and come back year after year for artists who will please their audience. European colleagues respect us and collaborate on projects that are of interest on both sides of the Atlantic.

As a result of our networking with our US colleagues at trade shows and while on tour with MGAM artists, several of our New York colleagues have sent us artists for representation. These have included IMG, Tom Gallant at MCM and Young Concert Artists. The relationships with US artists and managers help us extend our reach into the US market.

It has always been my number one rule to represent music for which I have an extensive working knowledge. I have consistently positioned MGAM as a company that cares about the art of music. Marilyn Gilbert is a violinist who studied chamber music intensively. It was always a personal dream to be an ethno-musicologist. Our involvement with world music has given me a chance to participate actively in an area that fascinates me. I am a child of the sixties who toured playing guitar, fiddle and mandolin in a folk music group during summers. Folk music has always been central to my being.

While MGAM began as exclusively a classical music agency, we have expanded our roster in the past eight years to include world and roots music. As the industry has changed in the past ten years, presenters are looking for a wider variety of artists to present in order to appeal to a broader audience.