As the 2020s begin Vancouver Symphony Orchestra brings the VSO New Music Festival to stages from January 11-16. With a theme of (Re-)Creation, the festival is a chance to revisit and discover new, brilliant and extraordinary works of the 21st Century with the artists who originally created them.
Opening the festival January 11th at The Chan Centre For Performing Arts at UBC are a set of contemporary masterpieces from Canadian Nicole Lizzee, Finland’s Kaija Saariaho and South Korean composer Unsuk Chin. Youtube mix artist Andrew Huang also does a sound installation on Opening Night at the Chan Centre. Closing night, January 16th, at the Orpheum finds Max Richter’s “trancey” re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with Maestro Bramwell Tovey and VSO Concertmaster Nicholas Wright.
Throughout the New Music Festival guests will also find remix master Nicole Lizée re-imagining scenes from The Sound of Music and taking the reigns in a Carte Blanche concert with Vern Griffiths performing a redux version of her hit Perxploitation from last year’s festival. Finnish clarinetist Kari Kriikku mashes together global traditions in his Bizarre Bazaar, and Viviane Hagner performs Korea’s most celebrated living composer Unsuk Chin’s delicate and atmospheric Violin Concerto. Plus, major works by Kaija Saariaho and Thomas Adès along with guest artists Vern Griffiths, Standing Wave and much more.
“For a lot of New Music the first performance is both its “premiere” and “dernière”. It’s written, played once or twice and then if a champion doesn’t carry it forward we don’t get a chance to discover it. For this year’s festival we decided to focus on some fantastic works already in existence from composers we greatly admire and to bring the artists who inspired their music to Vancouver to ‘re-create’ the original performances. Hence our theme of (Re-)Creation”, says Music Director Maestro Otto Tausk
Festival passes are just $81.50/adult, $77.50/senior, and $50/student. Single tickets are $25/adult and senior, and $12/student and available at vancouversymphony.ca