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Canadians unite in song for second annual Music Monday
More than 600,000 students perform coast-to-coast simultaneous concert in celebration of music education
Check out www.musicmonday.ca for events in your area
TORONTO, May 11, 2006 - More than 600,000 students from every province and territory across Canada are today celebrating the second annual Music Monday - a nation-wide simultaneous concert to celebrate music education in Canadian schools. Students and teachers from coastto-coast will take their music programs outdoors and perform the same song at the exact same time, uniting the country in song.
The Coalition for Music Education in Canada created Music Monday to celebrate the galvanizing power of music and demonstrate how that power is rooted in school music programs. The theme song for Music Monday, "A Little Music," was composed specifically for this event by Canadian composer, Chris Tait.
Music Monday is celebrated on the first Monday of May each year at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 11 a.m. Mountain time, 12 p.m. Central time, 1 p.m. Eastern Time, 2 p.m. Atlantic Time and 2:30 p.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.
"Music Monday invites everyone to show their love of music in their schools and in their lives. We have more than 1,200 schools from British Columbia, to the Yukon and Northwest Territories joining their peers across the country to Newfoundland and Labrador. What a demonstration of the galvanizing power of music," says Coalition for Music Education in Canada executive director, Ingrid Whyte. "Music education is an important tool for engagement, harmony, creativity and achievement in our young people and Music Monday is a powerful platform to advocate the importance of keeping music in our schools."
"The schools participating in Music Monday are among the fortunate - most of them have music programs," continues Whyte. "Many young students are not as fortunate as music classes, resources and specialist teachers have faced serious cuts or elimination throughout the country."
The National Arts Centre in Ottawa will once again be the heart of Music Monday with a special noon-hour concert co-hosted by Dr. Marc Garneau, former head of the Canadian Space Agency and the first Canadian astronaut in space and Boris Brott, principal youth and family conductor of the National Arts Centre Orchestra. A broadband connection will...