Music Gallery Editions – "The Strangest Record Company In The Country"

Music Gallery Editions (MGE) was a record label operated between 1977 and 1981 by Toronto's Music Gallery, an artist-run live music venue originally located at 30 St. Patrick St., near OCADU (then known as the Ontario College of Art) and the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 1984, it shifted over to Queen St. West (in the space currently occupied by The Theatre Centre) and then to Richmond St. in 1991. However, if buildings in this city could talk they'd probably say "Time makes condos of us all," and in 2000, the Music Gallery moved to its current home at St. George the Martyr Anglican Church after the Richmond St. location went the way of all brick in Toronto.

MGE released 27 LPs during its brief existence, almost all of which were various types of experimental or avant-garde music. In what may have been a nod to England's Factory Records' practice of assigning label catalogue numbers to artwork and events along with its musical releases, MGE 23 was "a mix of recorded telephone calls wishing composer John Cage a happy 65th birthday" at a live event held at the Music Gallery. You can see it listed on page two of this catalogue of MGE releases I found in the Toronto Reference Library's vertical music clipping files located in the Arts Department on the 5th floor.







This article (dated January 7th, 1978) by Peter Goddard, the Toronto Star's jazz critic at the time, describes Music Gallery Editions as "the strangest record company in the country," but singles it out for praise because "it takes risks. It records and releases music no one else would touch," and concludes by saying "This company will not hesitate to record any kind of New Music, and what it records will be good." The article also states that the artists themselves were responsible for designing their album album covers, and as you'll see, many of them rose to the challenge and produced remarkably striking work on what was probably a shoestring budget.

The Toronto Reference Library's vinyl collection (also located on the 5th floor) includes 18 of these 27 albums. MGE 1 and 2 (1976), both of which were live recordings of the Canadian Creative Music Collective performing at the Music Gallery, had identical covers featuring the group's members hanging out in front of the original venue on St. Patrick St.







Subsequent releases were as wide-ranging as you would expect. MGE 4 (David Rosenboom - On Being Invisible, 1977) was, in the cover's words, "A solo electric concert utilizing hybrid-computer wave analysis and sound synthesis, brain signals, touch sensors, and small acoustic sources."







There was modern classical music, including an example of composer Lubomyr Melnyk's "continuous music," a method of piano playing that involves a constant flow of very rapid arpeggios (up to 19 notes per second!). In Melnyk's words, "The continuity of the music reflects the continuity of time and life, relating essentially to the flow of time within the player's life. In a live performance situation the music can attain an intense spiritual state." Another group, The Glass Orchestra, consisted of musicians who usually played instruments made out of glass.





Left to right:

The Glass Orchestra - S/T (MGE 10, 1978)

Lubomyr Melnyk Performs KMH: Piano Music In The Continuous Mode (MGE 18, 1979) (also available at Naxos Music Library)

James MacDonald - Pieces For Solo Horn (MGE 21, 1979)

Free and otherwise experimental jazz was also well-represented on Music Gallery Editions. The Artists' Jazz Band was a collective that had already been performing for 15 years by the time Live At The Edge was released in 1976. The liner notes state that "They 'didn't know what they were doing' at first and didn't care. Now they know and don't care," which is an appropriately punk rock attitude for an album released the same year as The Ramones' first LP.









Left to right:

The Artists' Jazz Band - Live At The Edge (MGE 3, 1976)

Casey Sokol and Eugene Chadbourne - Improvised Music From Acoustic Piano and Guitar (MGE 9, 1977)

John Oswald and Henry Kaiser - Improvised (MGE 12, 1978)





The most well-known group to release an album on Music Gallery Editions was probably London, Ontario's own Nihilist Spasm Band, a group of musicians who originally formed in 1965 and are still going strong to this day with their unique mix of free jazz, electronic music and noise rock. Vol. 2 (MGE 13, 1979), their appropriately-titled second album, features on its cover a number of the band's self-made instruments.





And just when you thought you might have this label figured out, they'd throw a curve ball at you in the form of an album of musicians interpreting whale sounds, or some traditional folk music from Quebec.

Left to right:

Interspecies Music - Whalescapes (MGE 5, 1977)

Various Artists: Sur La Cote Nord: Musique Folklorique Du Nord Quebec/Folklore Music Of Northern Quebec (MGE 17, 1979)





I'll close with a photo of my favourite album cover of the lot (leopard print saxophone!), Vic d'Or's 33/3:



This album of improvised jazz, spoken-word and "non-music" (which includes song titles like "Things to do in Northampton With my 'Pectus Excavatum'" and "Bulge Event for the Batty Persons Gallery"), also has a little write-up on its back cover that seems like a fairly representative mission statement for the label as a whole...to the extent that a collective artistic enterprise as free-spirited and diverse as Music Gallery Editions could ever be neatly summarized, anyway.



