Palliser Music Publishing specializes in publications of contemporary Canadian works for piano, strings, winds and voice. This repertoire is intended for the development of young musicians and represents a wide array of styles and levels of technical complexity. Representing more than 50 composers from across Canada, the catalog contains several hundred selections, published individually and in collections that are ideal for teaching and performance.

Linda Schwartz (PhD, MMus, BMus) is the founder and owner of Palliser Music Publishing. Formerly Dean of Arts and Sciences at Ambrose University in Calgary, Dr. Schwartz’s expertise in music composition and analysis is rich and diverse. A founding executive member of the Manitoba Composers’ Association (1980), Schwartz has composed and arranged professionally for more than 3 decades, and is the recipient of several Manitoba Arts Council commissions. She is also a former music advisor to the Eckhardt-Gramatte Foundation. A number of her pieces have been published, and her scholarly writing on music theory, philosophy of music, critical pedagogy, and creative interpretation has been widely disseminated.

Palliser Music Publishing is proud to carry the legacy established by Alberta Keys Music Publishing, founded in 1980, and operated under the visionary leadership of Roberta Stephen. Alberta Keys was instrumental in representing composers from the Alberta and Canadian prairie regions, and had a
distinctive reputation for publishing pedagogical music of high caliber. Many of Western Canada’s premier composers have chosen to publish work suitable for teaching young performers with Alberta Keys, and it is the intent of Palliser Music Publishing to retain these composer affiliates and add new composer affiliates across Canada, including emerging composers who write repertoire for young musicians.

A Brief Overview of the Current Operation: Palliser Music

Publishing is a small publisher of music by Canadian composers whose mandate is to preserve a legacy of Canadian music. A sole proprietorship, incorporated in the province of Alberta (incorporated 2014; operational in 2015), Palliser publishes and promotes the music of approximately 50 Canadians, past and present, whose creative work is accessible to the developing musician. Copyrights held by Palliser include solo and chamber music for piano, voice, strings and winds by Violet Archer, John Beckwith, Allen Gordon Bell, Dean Blair, Jean Coulthard, Mary Gardiner, Srul Irving Glick, Peter Jancewicz, Richard Johnston and Roberta Stephen. New composers, many based in Alberta, have signed on with Palliser Music, including: Michalis Andronikou (Ambrose faculty), Han Ding, Damian Jordan, Margaret King, Mark Mitchell, Beverly Lewis, Lorna Paterson, Linda Purves, and Peter Rudzik. Altogether there are just over 400 titles published singly or in collections in the Palliser catalogue.

MISSION and IDENTITY STATEMENTS

Palliser Music Publishing has maintained a small but steadily growing clientele mostly in Canada and the USA (retail music stores, libraries, and private music teachers and students), and a few European clients. Long & McQuade is a regular client, and recently, Tom Lee/Steinway Piano Galleries signed on with Palliser Music to sell Palliser inventory on consignment in its stores across Western Canada and Ontario. Additionally, the Royal Conservatory of Music holds roughly 10 long term leases with Palliser Music (including Bell’s Old Coyote’s Saturday Night and Glick’s I Never Saw Another Butterfly on the ARCT piano and voice syllabus lists, respectively).

The national ANMCP (holding about 25 annual non-competitive festivals of Canadian Contemporary \ Music across the country each year) includes a number of Palliser Music publications in its syllabus. The Alberta Registered Music Teachers’ Association (ARMTA) recently commissioned 8 new works by
Alberta composers for piano, voice and violin (2017) to celebrate Canada 150 and ARMTA 85, published by Palliser Music, and ensured that its more than
400 members received free copies of these commissioned works. ARMTA featured these publications on the cover of its Summer 2018 Tempo Magazine and interviewed each of the commissioned composers. In (2019), Palliser Music was a featured sponsor of the national Registered Music Teachers Association conference in Winnipeg.