♪         In just twelve years, the Ottawa Chamber Music Society has turned heads across Canada and around the world. The OCMS is a not-for-profit organization with charitable status, dedicated to presenting chamber music of the highest possible artistic standard.

♪         The Society’s major event, the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, has become the largest chamber music festival in the world and is now recognized as one of Canada’s most important cultural events. The Society is the only cultural organization to win the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts seven times. In 2005, over 62000 people attended the Festival.

♪         The Society’s mandate is to introduce new listeners to the art form and to provide affordable and accessible world-class concerts.

♪         In the fall of 2000, the Society launched the highly successful fall/winter Concert Series. Now entering its sixth year, the Series was created in response to the huge number of requests received to programme concerts during the regular concert season.

♪         Family Music Fair is a day-long musical journey presented in the spring. Children and music-lovers of all ages experience over 100 short concerts, meet musicians, ask questions, participate in a treasure hunt, try instruments of every description and admission is free.

♪         CMS Classics was launched in December 2001 to produce chamber music CD’s of the highest calibre. This is achieved through combining top Canadian musicians performing in acoustically perfect Ottawa heritage churches using the very best sound engineers and producers.

♪         The first CD Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major has received widespread acclaim and airplay on CBC Radio.  "If you require only one version of this quintet, then this is the one."  Rated 5 stars and the top choice of the year for five-star recordings — Richard Todd, The Ottawa Citizen.

♪         Their second CD, Joseph Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Christ has followed in the steps of the first. "This is a beautifully played performance, devout, moving and sincere... I give it 5 stars out of 5." — Rick Phillips, Sound Advice on CBC Radio.

♪         Such precision and care is taken in producing their CD’s that the Society arranged to have the police barricade the streets surrounding Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa where The Seven Last Words of Christ CD was recorded.

♪         The Seven Last Words of Christ was also recorded for television and broadcast on VisionTV in 2004, 2005 and 2006 for Easter. This production was picked up by EWTN in the United States and aired in 2005 and 2006. They will continue to broadcast the program nationally in the United States to 126 million homes for the next 4 years. The concert was also broadcast globally to 127 different countries through 7 satellites, Sirius Satellite Radio and audio/video streaming on the internet, radio and ipods. In 2006 WPBS broadcast the Seven Last Words of Christ for the first time.

♪         More of their concerts are broadcast nationally by CBC Radio than by any other arts organization to a total radio audience of over 2 million listeners each year.

♪         The Society specializes in bringing different musicians together from all over Canada who might not ordinarily have the opportunity to perform together and have established a reputation of achieving a special synergy with audiences. The Chamber Players of Canada will alternate with different musicians and future projects include concerts, recordings and tours. Their internationally critically acclaimed debut recording of the Schubert Octet, under CBC Records, features violinists Andrew Dawes and Jonathan Crow, Guylaine Lemaire  - viola, Julian Armour - cello, Murielle Bruneau - double bass, Kimball Sykes - clarinet, James Sommerville - horn and Christopher Millard – bassoon.