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Jaclyn Grossman. Photo: Jessica Osber; Miriam Khalil. Photo: Shayne Gray Photography

Preview | Jaclyn Grossman and Miriam Khalil Present Salam-Shalom: Echoes of Home

By Kaitlyn Chan on 21 November 2025 Contemporary, Interviews, Vancouver, Vocal, West

In Vancouver on Nov. 29, sopranos Jaclyn Grossman and Miriam Khalil will present Salam-Shalom: Echoes of Home. This program of Arabic and Jewish music explores how these two distinct cultures are intertwined through shared histories, human experiences, and sounds. They will be accompanied by pianist Gordon Gerrard, artistic director of City Opera Vancouver. Both performers emphasize their eagerness to embrace this learning opportunity. “Right out of the gate, we both [agreed] let’s not do ‘I’m doing my thing, and you’re doing your thing,’” says Grossman. “Let’s share in each other’s music and cultures in this concert.” A Jewish singer and…

Newswire | PuSh Festival Returns this Winter with 25 Performances and Events

By Newswire on 20 November 2025 Contemporary, Dance, Film, Indigenous, Newswire, Scena Arts, Theatre, Vancouver, West

PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is excited to announce the programming for the 2026 Festival, which returns to Vancouver from January 22 to February 8, 2026. For two and a half weeks, PuSh Festival invites audiences to discover innovative contemporary works of live performances by local, national and international artists. PuSh has been the city’s midwinter anchor for more than two decades—a place where live arts are celebrated, where risk is rewarded, and where audiences engage with bold, audacious performances. The 2026 PuSh Festival will continue to defy the bounds of discipline, bringing together 25 presentations of theatre, dance, music, installation, film,…

Newswire | The Azrieli Foundation Announces 2026 Azrieli Music Prizes Laureates

By Newswire on 13 November 2025 Contemporary, Montreal, Music Competition, Newswire, West

Montréal, QC, November 13, 2025 – Today, the Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre (AMACC) named four outstanding composers as the 2026 Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) Laureates. Created in 2014 by Dr. Sharon Azrieli CQ for the Azrieli Foundation, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes celebrate excellence in music composition. See the press conference Congratulations to Hana Ajiashvili, who won the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music; Dalit Hadass Warshaw, who received the Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music; Nicholas Denton Protsack, who was awarded the Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music; and Adrian Mocanu, who won the Azrieli Commission for International Music. “We…

CD Review | Invented Folksongs, Anna Pidgorna, Ludovico Ensemble

By John Gilks on 11 November 2025 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Contemporary

Pidgorna: Invented Folksongs Anna Pidgorna, composer & vocals; Ludovico Ensemble Red Shift Records In 2012-13 Ukrainian/Canadian composer and vocalist Anna Pidgorna visited Ukraine to record traditional Ukrainian folk music. She used this material as a jumping-off point for her own composition Invented Folksongs. It’s a set of four longish (each 10 minutes or so) songs and two shorter instrumental pieces. These are in no way an “arrangement” of traditional pieces à la Benjamin Britten. The texts were written by Pidgorna herself and the compositions blend some folk elements with music that uses rhythms and tonalities that don’t sound at…

CD Review | Andrew Staniland Calamus, Leibel, Regehr, Chafe

By John Gilks on 11 November 2025 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Contemporary, Vocal

Staniland: Calamus Jane Leibel, soprano; Vernon Regehr, cello; Robert Chafe, narrator Leaf Music Andrew Staniland’s Calamus is a setting of four poems from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. They are scored for cello and soprano with an actor reading each poem prior to the music. The work is completed by four variations for cello. Each song lasts about six to eight minutes and so, with the readings and the variations, the recording comes in at around 39 minutes. Calamus 6 sets “Not Heaving from my Ribb’d Breast Only.” This is the busiest and most dissonant of the four settings. It…

Newswire | 13th Edition Of 21C Music Line-Up Announced

By Newswire on 11 November 2025 Canadian Music, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary, Jazz, Newswire, Piano, Toronto

Toronto, ON, November 11, 2025 – This season the 21C Music series, now in its 13th edition, includes five concerts in late January and an additional one in May 2026. The series features music composed mostly during the 21st century, which often crosses boundaries and genres. With this newly-minted music, audiences have an opportunity to experience fresh new sounds and ideas from the greatest musical minds of today and experience works by Canadian as well as international composers, and musicians who are mining new musical territories, breaking down barriers, and introducing us to new virtuosic music creations. In total, the Festival will include more than 7 premieres: 2 world (Alison Yun-Fei…

The World of Kurtág Miniatures: Brigitte Poulin and the Játékok

By Viktor Lazarov on 10 November 2025 Contemporary, Montreal, Piano

In the 1980s, Montreal pianist Brigitte Poulin discovered the works of György Kurtág. As a 20-year-old student at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Poulin attended the contemporary music festival organized by Claudio Abbado in the Austrian capital, where a new Kurtág commission was being premiered. “Since then, his music has been a part of my life,” she says. As borders gradually opened, Poulin travelled to Budapest to hear Kurtág’s works. Some years later, she performed his chamber music in Italy. This fall, Poulin is releasing an album under the Leaf Music label dedicated to a collection…

Esprit Orchestra: A New Season of Art Inspired by Artists

By Emma Yee on 10 November 2025 Contemporary, Orchestral, Toronto

Esprit Orchestra launches their second annual Edge Of Your Seat International Festival with two concerts that celebrate elation and musical legacy. The first, Tour de Force (Nov. 30), will feature “very strong, exuberant, vigorous pieces to show the dynamic that Esprit can attain in exciting people and putting them on the edge of their seat,” says Music Director and Conductor Alex Pauk. The concert opens with Thomas Adès’s Overture to The Tempest. Based on the Shakespeare play, Adès’s opera premiered in 2012 as a co-production between Metropolitan Opera, Festival d’opéra de Québec and Vienna State Opera—and it won a 2014…

Photos: SKP—Celebration Issue (@skpbeijing)

Jakub Józef Orliński: A Countertenor for Modern Times

By Justin Bernard on 10 November 2025 Baroque and Early, Contemporary, Interviews, Opera, Popular Music

Jakub Józef Orliński is only 34 years old, but his media presence and aura have already launched him to the rank of one of the most recognizable personalities of the baroque music scene. Like many young artists, he started off quietly, without knowing where this life would lead him. In 2015, after already experiencing success singing roles in Poland and Germany, he began studies at Juilliard, New York’s prestigious music school, and became a finalist at the Metropolitan Opera auditions. And yet it was a unique event, on a July afternoon during a heatwave in 2017, that would put him…

Winter Festivals 2025-26

By An Ven on 10 November 2025 Choral, Classical Music, Contemporary, Guides, Montreal, Multimedia, Orchestral, Ottawa, Quebec City, Theatre, Toronto, Visual Arts

Montreal Festival International Bach Montréal Nov. 15-Dec. 7 Festival International Bach Montréal offers a dozen concerts every autumn, many geared toward children, as well as a choral evening. This year, several international artists will revisit the masterpieces of Bach and his successors. On Nov. 15, Les Boréades present a concert based on the story of Acis and Galatea set to music by Handel. Samy Moussa will conduct the orchestra and chorus of Festival International Bach Montréal in Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Quebec City (Nov. 20) and at the opening of the festival in Montreal (Nov. 21). The event closes with Bach’s…

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