CGQ launches a GoFundMe
Nov 13, 2025 – Louis
Following on the heels of receiving a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for our Well-Tempered Four Seasons project (see previous blog entry), we have launched a GoFundMe to get further help with this project. Since there are 12 composers involved, the finances and the logistics are sizable. The CC grant covered almost all the commissioning fees as well as a large portion of the cost of recording an album of these 12 new preludes and fugues for guitar quartet. On top of the commissioning fees and album production costs, there is also all sorts of extras that come into play – rehearsals, bank fees, land travel and accommodations to work with composers who are not too far away from us…the list goes on. The GoFundMe was launched in late October and is already almost up to $1000.00. If you or someone you know might enjoy donating to an artistic project, especially one with an environmental angle, please visit our page by clicking on this link, or share the link with others.
The Well-Tempered Four Seasons project
May 03, 2025 – Louis Trépanier
A new project begins. The CGQ, with generous support from the Canada Council for Arts, is commissioning 12 composers to each write a prelude and fugue for guitar quartet. In what is clearly theft of Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, each composer was assigned a month of the year and one of the twelve semi-tones as a tonal center, and asked to draw inspiration from on the one hand a childhood memory related to their month and on the other, notions of climate change, climate education, justice, or efforts made in this field. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly unconnected elements is meant to reflect the idea of wanting future generations to experience happy childhood moments of their own while feeling concern about the uncertainty ahead. From this would come motivation to take action.
The twelve composers are Clarice Assad (January / B♭); Carlo Domeniconi (February / F♯); Celil Refik Kaya(March / G♯); Dusan Bogdanovic (April / F); Olga Amelkina-Vera (May / D); Christine Donkin (June / C♯); João Luiz (July / B); Andrea Clearfield (August / E); Dale Kavangh (September / C); former CGQ member Renaud Côté-Giguère (October / A); former CGQ member Patrick Roux (November / G); and Sergio Assad (December / E♭).
Stay tuned for more news on this project!