Grants to Professional Musicians (Individuals): Classical Music
Deadlines
Completed applications and all support material must be postmarked on or before 1 March or 1 November. If either of these dates falls on a weekend or statutory holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day.
Applicants who wish to pursue advanced studies in an academic institution must apply to the 1 March competition deadline.
The Canada Council will not accept applications postmarked after the deadline, incomplete applications, or those submitted by fax or email. You will not be contacted if your application is incomplete.
Program Description
This program offers grants to professional Canadian musicians working in classical music of all world cultures. Grants provide successful applicants with the opportunity to pursue their own artistic and creative development.
Professional musicians include instrumentalists, singers, composers, arrangers, conductors and opera stage directors. There are three categories of applicants:
- emerging artists
- mid-career artists, and
- established artists.
A definition of each category is provided in the Eligibility section, below.
Grants cover subsistence, transportation and project costs related to a program of work lasting from a few weeks to a year.
A studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, with living accommodation, is also available to a Canadian musician, at moderate cost. The studio may be used for a period of three months to one year, from 1 September to 31 August. Individual musicians may indicate their interest in the studio in the “Grants to Professional Musicians (Individuals)” application form, as part of their project description. Only applicants who apply to the 1 March deadline can be considered for the studio.
Eligibility
Applicant Eligibility
To apply to the Canada Council, you must be a Canadian citizen or have permanent resident status, as defined by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Canadian citizens need not be residents of Canada when they apply.
You must also meet the Canada Council for the Arts’ definition of a professional artist, which is an artist who:
- has specialized training in the field (not necessarily in academic institutions)
- is recognized as such by his or her peers (artists working in the same artistic tradition)
- is committed to devoting more time to artistic activity, if he or she can afford to, and
- has a history of public presentation.
To apply to this program, you must also meet the eligibility requirements of one of the following categories of applicants:
- emerging artists are those who have completed their basic training (university graduation or equivalent in specialized or self-training). They must have had an active professional career for at least two years, in addition to performances while in academic settings or as part of specialized training programs
- mid-career artists are no longer full-time students and will have completed their formal studies at least five years before applying to this program. They must have had an active professional career for at least five years, or
- established artists are those who have made a nationally or internationally recognized contribution to music over a number of years and are still active in their profession.
All Canada Council for the Arts programs are accessible to Aboriginal artists and artists of diverse cultural and regional communities of Canada.
Restrictions
You may apply for only one Canada Council Grant to Professional Artists program (or to one deadline of that program) in any artistic discipline per year. The Canada Council will also accept from you one request for a Travel Grant per fiscal year.
You can receive a maximum of two Grants to Professional Artists from the Canada Council in any 48-month period.
You must have submitted all outstanding final reports for previous Canada Council grants before you can apply to any Canada Council program for professional artists.
Note: If you are an established professional artist who works in more than one discipline, and you meet the eligibility criteria as an established artist in both disciplines, you may apply to two different Grants to Professional Artists programs per fiscal year. You must, however, accept or refuse the first grant offered by the Canada Council, within two weeks of the date of the grant notification. If you accept the first grant offered, your other application will be withdrawn from competition. Each disciplinary section defines its own criteria for determining who is considered to be an established artist.
Project Eligibility
You can use these grants:
- for advanced studies in composition or performance, privately or at an institution (the Canada Council considers advanced studies to be those beyond a Bachelor of Music degree or equivalent private or self-training)
- to compose
- to explore or develop new repertoire
- to research music that will be used in the performance or composition of new works
- for collaborative creation projects involving no more than two musicians (for example, projects can involve two composers, or a composer and a librettist/lyricist), and
- to attend workshops for individual professional artistic development.
You cannot use these grants:
- for projects that have been completed already
- for projects related to music therapy
- for collaborative advanced training projects, i.e. duos, trios, quartets etc.
(refer to the Concert Production and Rehearsal Program of Aboriginal Classical, Folk, Jazz and World Music program)
- for projects involving composition commissioning (refer to the Residencies and Commissioning of Canadian Compositions program for commissions)
- to cover capital costs, such as the purchase of computers, software, musical instruments, microphones or amplifiers
- to cover recording studio costs (refer to the Grants for Specialized Music Sound Recording program)
- for auditions or to cover promotional costs (refer to the Career Development Program)
- to cover rehearsal or production costs (refer to the Concert Production and Rehearsal Program for Aboriginal, Classical, Folk, Jazz and World Music program), and
- for academic research or post-graduate studies in musicology or theory (refer to the programs of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada).
Eligibility for Collaborative Creation Projects
You can use these grants to work with another artist, but only on creation projects.
There can be only two artists involved in collaborative creation projects, and both must meet the eligibility criteria of the program. One of the artists must take responsibility for the application, but both artists must provide their signatures on a separate document to confirm their collaboration.
If a grant is awarded, both artists will be subject to the conditions of the program.
Grant Amount
Amounts and Success Rates
Grants range from $3,000 to $20,000, in amounts of $1,000. You must round your total budget request to the nearest thousand.
The grant amount available to you depends on your needs as an artist and the period of time required to complete your proposed project, as follows:
- a maximum of $10,000 is available for short-term projects (five months or less)
- a maximum of $20,000 is available for long-term projects (between five and 12 months).
Approximately 60 grants per year are awarded by the Classical Music component of the Grants to Professional Musicians (Individuals) program. The percentage of successful applicants can be as low as 20 percent.
Eligible Expenses
Grants may cover your subsistence, transportation and project expenses.
Subsistence expenses are your living costs, to a maximum of $2,000 a month. An itemized budget is not required for these costs.
Project expenses must be justified by a detailed budget and may include tuition fees, a teacher’s honorarium, research materials (e.g. books and CDs), rental of music equipment, instrument maintenance and rental of practice space.
Transportation expenses must be justified by a detailed budget. Only your air, rail or bus ticket costs will be covered, for travel from one city to another. You may also request half the cost of air transportation for a cello, double bass or harp.
The air travel portion of the grant is based on the cheapest available airfare from your place of residence to the place where you will carry out your program of work. If you will already be in that location, you may apply for a one-way fare to return to a destination in Canada.
Allowable transportation expenses do not include hotel or meal costs, local transportation, travel by a spouse or dependants, or the shipment of personal items.
Other Sources of Funding
You must provide information on other sources of funding that you have applied for, either from an academic institution or from other private or public sources. The Canada Council may share the funding of a project with other private or public donors or sources, but it will not fund a project that has already received full financial support.
Assessment of Applications
Applications will be regrouped to ensure that they will be evaluated by the most appropriate peer assessment committee. Committees are composed of three to five experienced professional musicians, and new committees are set up for each competition.
Committee members are selected for their expertise. In addition to being peers of the applicants, the members are women and men representing Canada’s two official languages, Aboriginal peoples, and Canada’s cultural and regional diversity.
Applicants will be notified of the results, by mail only, approximately three months after the competition closing date. Results will not be released over the telephone.
Application Form
Or
Further Information
This information sheet provides a summary of the Grants to Professional Musicians (Individuals) – Classical Music program. For further details or to obtain an application form, contact André Jutras, Music Section Officer (classical music).
Telephone: 1-800-263-5588 (toll-free) or (613) 566-4414, ext. 5071
TTY (TDD) machine, for hearing-impaired callers: (613) 565-5194
Fax: (613) 566-4409
Music Section
Canada Council for the Arts
P.O. Box 1047, 350 Albert Street
Ottawa ON K1P 5V8
July 2005