The Canadian Music Centre holds Canada's largest collection of Canadian concert music. The CMC exists to promote the works of its Associate Composers in Canada and around the world. The Centre was founded in 1959 by a group of Canadian composers who saw a need to create a repository for Canadian music. Initially the Centre focused on collecting and cataloguing serious musical works, developing a catalogue of music scores, copying and duplicating the music, and making them available for loan, both nationally and internationally. The Centre makes available on loan 18,000 scores and/or works by almost 700 Canadian contemporary music composers through its lending library. The CMC sells more than 900 CD titles featuring music of its Associate Composers and other Canadian independent recording producers. The Centre also offers an on-demand printing and binding service, music repertoire consultations, and is easily accessible through five regional centres across Canada, as well as through its website. The CMC also engages in a number of national outreach projects, is digitizing all its scores and works, conducts research, and administers several awards. The Ann Southam Audio Archive, administered by the CMC, holds the largest cumulative collection of recorded Canadian concert works in the world—this collection can be accessed through Centrestreams, the free streaming service on the CMC website. In 1981, the Centre established the Centrediscs recording label, the only label devoted entirely to Canadian concert music. The Centrediscs label has received numerous awards, including six JUNOs, an East Coast Music Award, six West Coast Music Awards, and two Grande Prix du Disque Canada. Today the organization includes a national office in Toronto and six regional centres. The CMC regional branches include 900 Johnson Street in Victoria as part of the Victoria Conservatory of Music complex, 837 Davie Street in Vancouver, the University of Calgarymusic library in Calgary, Chalmers House in Toronto, and 1085 Côte du Beaver Hall#200 in Montreal,. Increasingly, the CMC locations are becoming spaces for performances and workshops. The CMC also coordinates a variety of community-building and skill-sharing programs such as the Class Axe Guitar Workshop, EQ: Women in Electronic Music, and more.
