The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) is excited to announce a new chapter in our partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). This year’s collaboration will support patients within CAMH’s Youth Addiction and Concurrent Disorders Service (YCADS)—which provides specialized care for youth experiencing substance use and co-occurring mental health challenges—and the AMANI Provincial Network, a program dedicated to advancing culturally grounded mental health services for Black children, youth, and families across Ontario.

Through this initiative, CAMH clients will work alongside lead composer Andrew James Clarke to create an original composition that will premiere at CAMH and Roy Thomson Hall. We've designed this program to provide unique avenues for youth to learn, interact, and creatively express themselves.

This new collaboration builds on the success of the TSO’s previous partnership with CAMH through Art of Healing, a program developed in collaboration with Shkaabe Makwa—a Centre for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Wellness. Since its launch in 2022, Art of Healing has offered CAMH patients the opportunity to work with TSO composers and musicians through facilitated group process. 

The 2024/25 Art of Healing creation, Still Here by Cris Derksen will receive its première on April 30th and May 1, 2026 at Roy Thomson Hall. For more information about the concert and to buy tickets, visit the concert listing. 

These programs are part of TSO’s slate of health and well-being initiatives, intended to reach more age groups, people with different abilities, and diverse communities in Toronto.

Andrew Clarke

Art of Healing Composer (2025/26)

Andrew James Clark (b.1994) is a Canadian composer currently residing in Toronto. He is the founder of Classical Context, the President of the Canadian Composers Orchestra, and an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre.

Andrew's music has been performed in North America, Europe and Asia. He has been commissioned by Gustavo Gimeno as a NextGen Composer with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and has received a Composition Fellowship with the Hamilton Philharmonic. He has a published work with Counterpoint Library, and his music is included in the ACNMP’s Contemporary Showcase Syllabus.

His professional development includes a Conducting Apprenticeship with Orchestra Toronto, participation in the Amadeus Choir's Choral Creation Lab and participation in the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Generation Composition Program. He was recently selected to attend The Francis Poulenc Academy in August 2025 as a visiting Canadian composer participant. 

Andrew is also an accomplished pianist, educator and concert curator. His concert series Classical Context has been featured on ludwig-van.com's “Critic’s Picks”, and routinely showcases early-career professionals from throughout Canada. He is active as a harmony and counterpoint teacher across Canada, and the US. His efforts in sustaining a music therapy program for elderly and homeless musicians earned him a Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award in 2016, and in 2021 he helped launch the Digital Generations Program which creates digital composition portfolios on behalf of  emerging composers.

Andrew is the Music Director of Heron Park Baptist Church, and is married to Canadian composer Domenic Clark (formerly Jarlkaganova). He holds multiple music degrees from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music completed under the supervision of Gary Kulesha.

Ian Cusson

Program Advisor (2023/24), (2024/25), (2025/26) Art of Healing Composer (2022/23)

Métis composer Ian Cusson will be returning to the Art of Healing program as Program Advisor. He is a composer of art song, opera and orchestral work. Of Métis (Georgian Bay Métis Community) and French Canadian descent, his work explores the Canadian Indigenous experience, including the history of the Métis people, the hybridity of mixed-racial identity, and the intersection of Western and Indigenous cultures. 

He studied composition with Jake Heggie (San Francisco) and Samuel Dolin, and piano with James Anagnoson at the Glenn Gould School. He is the recipient of the Chalmers Professional Development Grant, and grants through the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation, the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. 

Ian was an inaugural Carrefour Composer-in-Residence with the National Arts Centre Orchestra from 2017 to2019 and was Composer-in-Residence for the Canadian Opera Company from2019 to 2021. He is a Co-artistic Director of Opera in the 21st Century at the Banff Centre and the recipient of the 2021 Jan V. Matejcek Classical Music Award from SOCAN and the 2021 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize. Ian is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Canadian League of Composers. 

He lives in Collingwood with his wife and four children.