Art Songs “Far and Wide”
Composers Mentorship Program
CASP’s Art Songs “Far and Wide” Mentorship Program for Composers is a national initiative designed to support the creation of new Canadian art song repertoire and foster mentorship between emerging composers and leading Canadian artists in the field.
This program offers early-career composers the opportunity to create a new set of three original art songs for solo voice and piano, developed over the course of eight months with guidance from established mentors. The resulting works will reflect the rich literary and cultural diversity of Canada, engaging with texts by Canadian writers and poets and exploring themes that resonate across regions, identities, and generations.
This program is made possible through generous support from The RBC Foundation and The Azrieli Foundation:
June 2026: A New Cycle
Inner Lands
This spring, CASP presented the premiere of Inner Lands, a new song cycle by composer Maria-Eduarda Mendes Martins, performed by tenor Colin Ainsworth and pianist Helen Becqué at the Canadian Music Centre.
Created through CASP’s Art Songs Far and Wide Mentorship Program for Composers, Inner Lands explores themes of migration, identity, memory, and belonging through texts by Émile Nelligan, Isabella Valancy Crawford, and E. Pauline Johnson. While each song stands on its own, the cycle unfolds as a unified dramatic arc tracing one speaker’s life through childhood, hardship, and mature resilience.
Over the course of the year, Maria-Eduarda worked closely with mentors Jeffrey Ryan and Ana Sokolović, performers tenor Colin Ainsworth and pianist Helen Becqué, and CASP Artistic Directors Steven Philcox and Lawrence Wiliford. Together, they shaped the work through conversations, workshops, revisions, and performance, culminating in Maria-Eduarda’s first song cycle, and a richly collaborative addition to the Canadian art song repertoire.
A key goal of the mentorship program is not only to support artistic creation, but also to document the creative process and share it with our wider community. Next season, CASP will release a short documentary exploring the development of Inner Lands, alongside a performance video of the cycle’s first song. The score will also be made available through the CASP website, helping performers, teachers, and audiences discover and engage with this remarkable new work.
Mentored Works resulting from CASP’s Past Mentorship Programming:
Click images below for details
