About Leading Tone Arts

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 Mandate | Brief History | Highlights | Sponsors | Artistic Directors | Board of Directors

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Mandate

Leading Tone Arts Productions operates with a mandate to educate and promote the public's appreciation of the aesthetic arts by providing interdisciplinary art performances, exhibitions, workshops and training opportunities in, but not necessarily limited to, public parks, senior citizens homes, churches, community centres, educational institutions, art galleries, museums and professional theatre venues.

Brief History

Leading Tone Arts Productions was founded in 1991 by Amanta Scott and David Tomlinson to create, perform and exhibit artistic works uniting visual arts, music, song, theatre and dance and reflecting themes of environmental and social sensitivity and awareness.

In 1993, the (then) Co-Artistic Directors, Amanta Scott and David Tomlinson, brought together as founding members of Leading Tone Arts Productions Inc. a group of persons dedicated to the success of the Leading Tone project, including the late Canadian composer Harry Somers and the late ethicist, educator and businessman Max Clarkson, as well as a number of professionals committed to the arts, who went on to become directors of the corporation. In 1994, Leading Tone Arts Productions Inc. was granted Letters Patent by the Government of Ontario as a not-for-profit corporation; and in 2005 was granted status as a Registered Charity.

Leading Tone Arts Productions is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with outreach to the global community. Installations, workshops and performances have been presented across Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Leading Tone provides access to artistic experiences in non-traditional or unconventional locations such as street festivals, community events, shopping malls, and local fairs - building bridges between art and the public in everyday locations. Leading Tone work is accessible to people of all ages, culture, financial situation, mental or physical capacity. Presentations are designed to be free from language barriers in order to reach a global audience of all ages.

Leading Tone Arts Productions Inc. is an innovative organization that inspires and educates people about the arts, recycling, resource conservation, cultural diversity, mythology and our environment.

Highlights

Exhibitions and Performances
2004	EnviroArt Recycling Initiative: a waste diversion, art and recycling initiative utilizing discarded materials provided by Public Works & Government Services Canada and Correctional Service of Canada Arising Phoenix: National Gallery of Canada
2003 - 2002	Glove Forest and Arising Phoenix: Music Gallery Art Gallery of Algoma and regional school tour Thunder Bay Art Gallery and regional school tour The Robert McLaughlin Gallery and regional school tour MacLaren Arts Centre Art Gallery of Peterborough, Ilan Cultural Centre, Taiwan - sold out 800-seat theatre.
1998 - 1996	Dragon Tango: Royal Ontario Museum: 10,000 visitors Singapore International Arts Festival: 3000 visitors Edmonton Art Gallery: 7500 visitors Market Hall and Academy Theatre: 6700 students Hijikawa Wind Museum, Japan Canadian Embassy, Tokyo
1995	O Canada: World Trade Centre, Taipei, commissioned by Canadian Trade Office in Taipei
Workshops
2001 - 2000	DoorWays LTAP studio: 5-month workshop: 16 youth-at-risk & seniors Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts: 2-week workshop: 35 students
Initiatives
2003 - 2001	Creation and posting of Curriculum Links Document for new Leading Tone Website: http://www.LeadingToneArts.com

Sponsors and Granting History

Profile of Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer

Canadian artist Amanta Scott founded Leading Tone Arts Productions in 1991.

Amanta Scott works in sculpture, surround-sound audio, video, voice, percussion, piano and performance. Critically acclaimed as "cutting edge", "ground breaking" and "strikingly innovative" Amanta has exhibited and performed extensively in art galleries, museums, theatres, dance, concert venues and festivals throughout Asia and North America.

Amanta has directed workshops across Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan for primary and secondary schools, colleges, youth at risk and professional development. Amanta holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition from the University of Toronto.

Since 1985 Amanta Scott has focused upon exploring the contemporary relevance and power of universal mythological symbols through Syncretic Art works integrating visual arts, music, theatre, movement, multimedia, mythology and contemporary archaeology.

Amanta is the Artistic Director and founder of Leading Tone Arts Productions, an innovative arts organization that promotes arts, environmental and cross-cultural awareness, educating through installations, exhibitions, workshops and performances around the world.

Amanta and has traveled extensively, circumnavigating the world several times, and living on a mountain in Japan. In 1996 she left downtown Toronto for the windy sunset shores of Lake Scugog and in 2006, Amanta returned to live in Toronto.

Board of Directors

Julian Pencharz, Treasurer

Julian Pencharz is a Chartered Accountant and is currently Controller of EQAO (Education Quality and Accountability Office,) an agency of the Ontario Government responsible for standardized testing across the Province. He has over twenty years experience at senior levels of organizations in a range of industries including; investments, entertainment and education. The entertainment business included musical theatre, rock and roll acts and film distribution. He thrives in startup/turnaround situations, business improvement, strategic planning and managing financial systems. Julian has been a Director on the board since the inception of Leading Tone Arts Productions Inc and is one of its founding members.

Phyllis Whyte

Phyllis Whyte is the Artistic Director of the Claude Watson Arts Program at Earl Haig Secondary School in Toronto where she has also taught dance and been the Head of the Dance Department since 1989. Ms Whyte was a scholarship student and apprentice choreographer with The Toronto Dance Theatre and an independent dancer and choreographer in Toronto. She has traveled extensively both on her own and leading trips for students, introducing teenagers to the joys of international travel and the arts in other cultures.

Richard McNeill

Richard McNeill is a professional artist and teacher at Central Technical School, Art Centre. Richard's work has been shown in significant solo and group exhibitions in North America and Europe.  He is the recipient of numerous government grants and exhibition awards with many large works executed, as commissions, for development sites within Toronto. Currently, he is the Site Supervisor of Night School at The Art Centre of Central Technical School, Toronto, where he also continues as senior Sculpture Instructor. He sits on several art boards and is Vice-President of the Sculptors Society of Canada and Co-Director of the Canadian Sculpture Centre.

Judi Schwartz has been the art gallery director/curator for Hart House, University of Toronto. In 2006 she retired and is now enjoying travelling. In addition she guest lectures in the Museum Studies department of the university. She has been located on the University of Toronto campus for thirty five years from the time she entered to pursue Bachelors and Masters of Arts degrees to her working career in the same location. She sits on a few boards of directors of cultural institutions and is active in a couple of professional associations. She is currently the chairman of the Board for Famous People Players in addition to her chairmanship for Leading Tone Arts Productions. In the past few years she was the driving force behind two publications, both of which she coordinated and was a contributing writer:  "A Strange Elation: Hart House, The First Eighty Years" and "Art and Everything". In her spare time, she travels the world in search of adventure, art and artifacts, new recipes, and learning about other cultures. She also enjoys experimenting with those new recipes when time permits. For meditative therapy, she has taken up the old art form of rug hooking. Judi has been a director of Leading Tone since 1994 and is one of its founding members.

Harry Somers, O.C. (1925 - 1999)

Harry Somers was one of the founding members of Leading Tone Arts Productions. He was a director on the board of Leading Tone Arts Productions from 1991 - 1999. One of Canada's most internationally-known composers, he was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers and in 1971 was named a Companion of the Order of Canada. His music includes works for orchestra, choir, voice, instrumental ensemble and piano, as well as for stage, film and television. His best-known work is the opera Louis Riel, commissioned for performance during Canada's Centennial Year, 1967.

Somers described his artistic development: "I've worked consistently on three different levels with three different approaches to composition. On one level my approach has been what I call 'community music' or 'music for use': for example music for amateurs and music for school use. On a second level I've created 'functional music,' in the specific sense: music for television, films and theatre, where the composition has to serve the demands of that medium. On a third level I have created without consideration for any limitations, sometimes completely experimentally, sometimes extending the line of a particular direction on which I had been working through a series of works, relating to a more restricted audience and to my personal development as an artist."

Harry Somers died on March 9, 1999. He left Canada and the world of music, an inestimable legacy of some of the most original and dramatically powerful scores of the century. His work has embodied Canadian music for the last half century and is truly a major part of Canada's heritage.

Max Clarkson was an avid supporter of new work in literature and the arts. He was a founding member and director on the board of Leading Tone Arts Productions from 1991 - 1998. Max Clarkson's career spanned two cultures, business and academia. The experience he gained from 24 years as a successful and innovative executive in the printing industry in the United States became the basis for the teaching and research he conducted as Dean and then Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Management [now the Rotman School of Management] at the University of Toronto.

The year after his retirement from the faculty in 1988, Mr. Clarkson founded the Centre for Corporate Social Performance and Ethics in the Faculty of Management, now the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics & Board Effectiveness

"Business Ethics is about the strategic management of ethical and trustworthy corporations, it is about the management of conflicts of interest, and it is about the management of risk so that wealth is created for society without increasing the risks to which people or the environment may be exposed, unknowingly or unwillingly." Max Clarkson

Clarkson's Graphic Controls Corporation pioneered important advances in labour relations long before they became more widely practiced in North American companies. Two examples of these were the introduction of profit sharing and an employee stock purchase plan by 1960.

He co-founded the Allentown Community Center in 1971 in the mixed-income district of Buffalo where he resided. In 1988, it expanded and was renamed the Clarkson Centre for Human Services. It was one of Max's proudest achievements.

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Info		Syncretic Art		Outreach
News | Artists		LockDown | Glove Forest		Enviro Art
Leading Tone | Media		Arising Phoenix | Dragon Tango		Workshops | Curriculum
Contact Us		Spirit Echoes | Other Works		Mythology

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web design by Amanta Scott • www.amantascott.com
Revised: Sat, Sep 30, 2006