Scottish Music Centre
Scotland
Member since:
2005
Website
CEO
Gill Maxwell
Address
City Halls, 100 Candleriggs,
Glasgow, G11NQ
Services
Introduction
The Scottish Music Centre plays a pivotal role in supporting and strengthening Scotland’s musical landscape by providing essential services across a range of key areas. Acting as a conduit, catalyst, and connector, we bring together musicians, composers, organisations, and audiences, fostering collaboration, creativity, and opportunity both within Scotland and across the world.
About
From preserving Scotland’s rich musical heritage through our ever-growing archive
to representing contemporary composers and musicians, we are dedicated to
supporting, promoting, and championing the remarkable talent that thrives within
Scotland’s music community.
Central to our mission is the global representation of Scotland’s music, creating
opportunities to showcase new works, inspire fresh commissions, and collaborate
with international partners to develop platforms for performance, touring, and
festival participation.
With over 130 active members, our goal is to ensure that Scotland’s music, across
all genres, is celebrated on the world stage, while facilitating the sale and hire of
our composers’ works for performance and enjoyment worldwide.
We are equally committed to nurturing the next generation of creative talent through
our work with young music makers and composers, supported by initiatives such as
MusiCares and Concept Sessions.
The Scottish Music Centre, photo: SMC
Services
The Scottish Music Centre offers the following services:
- Scotland’s Music Collection Consisting of over 40,000 fascinating items, dating back to the early 1500s, with articles ranging from hand-written scores by various famous Scottish composers, to original poems by Robert Burns, to sheet music of work from Robert Carver to the present day, to demo recordings of Scotland’s best bands, our collection is one of a kind.
- Membership The Scottish Music Centre is a membership organisation, and we work to serve the needs of our membership. Membership is open to anyone based in Scotland and we charge a low annual fee.
- Online Store Our online store offers books, sheet music and sound recordings for sale, either in physical format or as downloadable files.
- Music Hire Many of the orchestral, chamber and choral works in our archive are available for hire.
- Copying, Printing and Binding The Scottish Music Centre offers a range of copying, printing and binding services specialising in music related services. These include score and part preperation, booklets, printing and binding of large documents and dissertations.
- Events Space Located in the heart of Glasgow’s bustling Merchant City, our bright foyer is the ideal space to host small events. With a seating capacity of 50 we can accommodate seminars, training workshops, meetings and acoustic performances. Use of this space is free to our members.
- Talent Development Our talent development projects serve all of Scotland and many of them are targeted towards young people age 8-25. Since 2006 we have seen thousands of young people take part in our development activities and a wide variety of trusts and foundations investing in our work.
- International Opportunities Through our international partnerships such as Northern Connection and ISCM membership, we work to create opporunties for our members and Scotland’s composers. We also run the Scottish delegation to Classical:NEXT annually, in partnership with Creative Scotland.
- Information sharing and promotion Through our monthly newsletter, website, networks and social media we help our members and those in the Scottish music centre reach a wide audience.
- Digitisation We offer digitisation services to the general public, transferring audio from older media, such as cassettes to digitial formats
- Training & Conference Calendars Listings of professional development opportunities, congresses and sector events.
- News & Policy Documents Archive Curated updates and key reference documents on developments in the German music sector.
Have a look at the SCM website to view all information they have to offer about Scottish music life.
Visit the SMC website
Interview
Gill Maxwell
Scottish Music Centre – CEO
Gill Maxwell – CEO of the Scottish Music Centre
For readers outside Scotland: How is musical life organised and structured?
Scotland’s musical life is pretty diverse and wide-ranging, representing lots of different genres, ways of performing, cultural influences and approaches to education. Although the sector isn’t centralised, there are several main organisations that play an important role in music performance, music education, music export and sector/business support.
Government arts funding is distributed through Creative Scotland, while a few national companies—like the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) and Scottish Opera—receive funding directly from the Scottish Government. That mix of structure and flexibility helps the sector stay responsive to change, reflect what’s happening culturally, build resilience and remain open and inclusive.
Where does the Scottish Music Centre fit into this structure?
The Scottish Music Centre acts as a connector across the whole music sector and across all genres. We help artists, organisations and others find each other and work together, both within Scotland and through our extensive international networks.
We’re a membership organisation with around 120 active members, including ensembles, institutions, composers and musicians. Alongside that, we run education and talent development programmes for young people and emerging artists, helping them build the skills and experience they need for a career in music. We are members of several international partnerships such as Northern Connection sustainable touring and are also members of ISCM and EMC.
We look after and share Scotland’s largest collection of music, with around 40,000 items, some of which date back to the 16th century. We also sell and hire music to orchestras, performers and the general public worldwide. Our team all have backgrounds as musicians or in the business side of the industry, so we bring that practical experience into everything we do, from our talent development projects to international export, sustainable touring projects and archive and exhibition events.
Why is SMC relevant for national and international target groups?
Having spent decades building our national and international networks, working with music partners at. home and abroad and expanding our archive materials, we use our up-to-date knowledge, expertise and connections to signpost people to the right individuals, the relevant organisations and to potential partnerships and opportunities.
For anyone looking to engage with music in Scotland, the SMC is a conduit– and a champion of Scotland’s music: past, present and future.
