| Hi BEAMers, It's been an exciting year for electroacoustic music in Edmonton and the next few months are full of big events, but first. It's time to pay membership dues! We try to break even on most of our gigs, but to do promotions, run the website (www.beams.ca) and e-mail (info@beams.ca ), pay bank and royalty fees, pay membership to amaas, and front gig expenses, our only source of revenue is membership fees. For $10 a year you can be a big part of Edmonton's hippest and liveliest experimental music/media/random genius scenes. Please send a cheque for $10 made out to BEAMS along with your contact info to: BEAMS PO box 35088, Oliver Postal Outlet Edmonton, AB T5K 2R8 Or you can pay at any one of our gigs! Our annual general meeting is coming up on Wednesday, April 30 at 8:00 pm in room 525 at Alberta College, 10050 Macdonald Drive in Edmonton. Come find out about the details of our activities, add your own voice and help us elect our new board. With Raylene Campbell off to explore new graduate adventures we need a new treasurer. Anyone interested in learning this valuable skill in an extremely low pressure setting (like twenty transactions a year involving small $) please let us know at info@beams.ca and come to the meeting. We also need a new rep for amaas, the Alberta Media Arts Society, which involves two conference calls and free trips to one meeting and their convention/agm. This is also a great painless way into the world of boards and fundraising.This past year saw the release of our new CD Unsound, available at our website, or soon at the Canadian Music Centre (they've just asked us for copies to promote at their site www.musiccentre.ca ). Or you can get one at our gigs! We had great shows at Latitude 53, one in October with the Vertrek Ensemble, Jay Lind, Matt Schneider, Shawn Pinchbeck (thriving at U of Birmingham, due back in January 04 and for a visit in June) and myself, and one coming up as I write called Global Media Jam with Raylene Campbell and John Armstrong with the Ancestors, featuring Ray's new multimedia patch. That's April 18 at 8:00 at 10246-106 street.We've got a show coming up at the Works visual art festival called BEAMS atWork on June 22, to be curated by Bill Damur, 490-8264. We've received proposals from Gene Kosowan, Jeremy Coughlin, Holzkopf and Bill himself. We'll keep accepting them until May 15, either call Bill or send the idea, approximate timing and tech requirements to info@beams.ca . Do check out the website,www.beams.ca, and the Yahoo chat group at groups.yahoo.com/group/beamsmusic .There will also be a BEAMS component at the Sasquatch Festival this summer featuring Saint Crispin's Chamber Ensemble with videos by Tim Folkmann, and more. Look for details on this Woodstock North in June. We have the Latitude 53 gallery booked again for October 18. Keep those proposals coming! (and of course, make sure your membership is up to date).We're also thrilled to announce that we've received a grant from amaas to run a participatory workshop/concert to be run by the U of A's Laurie Radford, using the all of the University's great gear. Bill Damur and Reinhard Berg will also run avant-garde components. More details soon. Thanks again for all the great boardwork from Raylene, Bill, Reinhard, Shawn, John and Tim and to Jo Parrish for maintaining our web communications. see you at the AGM! best wishes, Don Ross president, Boreal Electroacoustic Music Society |