September already! Where did the summer go? I hope you enjoyed it. As for me, I tried my best. The beginning of the fall season always sends me through a mini-depression, soon dispersed by the prospect of the stream of wonderful artistic events that the fall brings. And, to be quite honest, my favourite events are definitely our annual SOCAN Awards gala presentations coming up in November in Toronto and Montreal. I start looking forward to these two evenings as soon as September rolls in!

I have previously mentioned in this space how much I enjoy my formal and casual meetings with members across the country. I know from those discussions that the SOCAN Awards are a favourite with many SOCAN members. But people working throughout the music industry – publishers, record producers, television and radio broadcasters and artist managers – have also said that each of our annual presentations is one of the highlights of the music season and the industry gathering they enjoy the most.

What these events are really about is our members’ success. The musical works and music creators honoured each year are selected according to public performance figures in Canada and worldwide. When you realize that SOCAN receives more royalties from foreign PROs for the performance of Canadian music than it pays them for performances of their own repertoires, it’s clear that we have much to celebrate. Canadian music is on a roll, both at home and abroad, and we want to promote it and spread the good news. Proudly!

The SOCAN Awards also present us with a unique opportunity to celebrate outstanding career contributions by our members. The winners of the top three awards for Lifetime, National and Special Achievement are all selected by a jury of SOCAN board members, who are songwriters, composers, lyricists and publishers, just like you. This task is taken seriously, with robust and convincing arguments being put forward in favour of each of the candidates, some of whom tell us later that the SOCAN Award was their very first! SOCAN is proud to be the first one to recognize its members’ talents and outstanding achievements. Nothing speaks louder than peer recognition!

Finally, the SOCAN Awards make us the focus of a lot of attention with the wide coverage they get each year in the print and electronic media. The value of that media coverage is incalculably greater than what we could achieve ourselves on our restricted budget.

Pierre-Daniel Rheault is an audio-visual music composer with more than 240 television soundtracks, three feature-length film scores and over 250 radio-drama compositions to his credit. He can be reached at president@socan.ca.

President's Message 2008
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President's Message 2007
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• Autumn
• Summer
• Spring

Uploaded Fall 2008

Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
Send them to Rick MacMillan, Words & Music Corporate Editor, at wordsandmusic@socan.ca