About Us Vision & Mandate

Soundstreams exists to strengthen public engagement with new Canadian music and music theatre/opera through commissioning, developing, producing, and disseminating that music. We aim to inspire, foster, and enable excellence at the highest international standards. 

Soundstreams has three key objectives: 

1. Building legacy for Canadian music by creating new opportunities for a greater diversity of artists. 
2. Telling stories through music that contextualize our time and place. 
3. Providing a brave space for conversation by building trust and relationships. 

Soundstreams’ key to realizing these objectives remains to stimulate and provoke ‘cultural conversations’ that bring new and diverse voices to the table. A ‘cultural conversation’ is a form of storytelling: multiple participants interpret and respond to themes that ponder identities, values, attitudes and issues, and unfolds over time. 

We tell these stories in the following ways: 

Illustrating the Conversation

Our Main Stage series explores diverse Canadian identities and perspectives. Recently, in partnership with Signal Theatre, we premiered Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin / Gállábártnit, two Indigenous-led music dramas set in the Cree and Sámi languages based on Indigenous storytelling. It has been invited to the 2024 European Capital of Culture in Bodo, Norway. 

Opening Up the Conversation

Main Stage themes are introduced in advance through digital marketing, and outreach programming such as Encounters. Upcoming examples include events in various venues in the Greater Toronto Area in collaboration with LASOs (Local Arts Service Organizations), and a discussion/workshop in fall 2021 around Clarence & Anita, a new work in development, exploring themes of racism and sexual harassment. 

Extending the Conversation

New digital formats combined with international touring will allow us to bring Canadian stories to ever wider audiences. Our productions of Claude Vivier’s Musik für das Ende and Love Songs will be centrepieces in a Vivier Festival at the Southbank Centre in 2022, the largest celebration of Canadian music ever hosted by a major international venue.