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L-R: Raaginder & Rashmeet Kaur with band at Vancouver's Indian Summer Festival. Photo: Kaitlyn Chan

Review | Vancouver’s Indian Summer Festival: Inspiration is at Your Fingertips

By Kaitlyn Chan on 15 July 2026 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Folk, Vancouver, Vocal, West, World Music

This year’s Indian Summer Festival demonstrates a beautiful truth: inspiration is all around. In the two concerts I attended, artists reinterpreted words from the songs they heard growing up, sampled melodies from film soundtracks, and translated the natural bioelectric signals of plants into audible sound. These concerts (seen July 11 & 13) offered a look into artists’ connections with their cultures, friends and family, and the natural world. In its mission statement, Indian Summer aims to “address a gap in Vancouver’s cultural landscape and to break stereotypical perceptions of South Asian art as ossified, traditional, and nostalgic”. After attending this…

Max Richter at Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. Photo: Victor Diaz Lamich

Review | Max Richter at Festival International de Jazz de Montréal

By Amanda Wong on 29 June 2026 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Montreal, Piano, Strings

There’s a certain depth in minimalistic compositions that makes you keen to appreciate more. Max Richter, the British-German composer behind a host of emotional movie scores, opened the annual Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM) with a well-met performance in Salle Wilfred-Pelletier on June 25. Richter is a true artist, capable of stirring up great depth from the most deceptively simple of notes. This concert focused on two of his albums played by American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and Richter himself: In A Landscape (2024), his most recent album, and the widely regarded The Blue Notebooks (2004). Richter played…

Sydney Andersson as CONSTANCE, photo by Silin Chen

Review | Experiments in Opera’s Constance: A Confession: Coming Clean

By Charles Geyer on 23 May 2026 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, La Scena Online, Musical Theatre, Opera, Theatre

Review of Constance: A Confession, a new multi-author opera created by the “Writers’ Room” of the Experiments in Opera company; viewed May 18, 2026, with further performances having run through May 22. What would happen if you assembled four writer-and-composer teams, challenged them to write an episode each about the life of a charismatic charlatan, gave them a deadline, and fired the starting pistol? You might get a comic-operatic morality tale such as Constance: A Confession, which just concluded its run at HERE Arts Center in New York City’s Soho district, the latest product to emerge from the cunningly conceived…

L-R: Pablo Ferrández by Kristian Schuller; Quatuor Danel by Marco Borggreve; Dinuk Wijeratne

Newswire | Music Toronto Announces Its 2026–27 Season

By Newswire on 24 April 2026 Classical Music, Contemporary, Newswire, Toronto

TORONTO, ON — (April 24, 2026) — Music Toronto is proud to announce its 2026–27 season, a vibrant and wide-ranging series that brings together many of today’s leading international and Canadian artists while deepening the organization’s commitment to artistic excellence, discovery, and community connection. On October 8, the season opens with internationally acclaimed cellist Pablo Ferrández, hailed by some as “the next Yo-Yo Ma,” making his Canadian solo recital debut. The program celebrates the 150th anniversary of Pablo Casals’ birth, honouring the legendary artist whose legacy reshaped the voice of the cello through works by Bach, Britten, and Cassadó. Throughout…

Aemilia Moser

Newswire | Aemilia Moser Wins 49th E-Gré National Music Competition in Voice

By Newswire on 20 April 2026 Canadian Music, Contemporary, Music Competition, Newswire, Vocal, West

Brandon, MB – The 49th Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition (E-Gré) for the performance of Canadian and contemporary music is pleased to announce its 2026 prize winners: 1st Prize: Aemilia Moser 2nd Prize: Kendra Dyck 3rd Prize: Camille Labonté City of Brandon Prize for the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work: Aemilia Moser Finalist Prizes (in alphabetical order): James Coole-Stevenson, Diana Rockwell, Hillary Tufford On April 18, 2026, six of Canada’s best emerging vocalists performed recitals for the 49th Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition (E-Gré) in Voice. The E-Gré Competition began in 1976 and is the most important annual Canadian and contemporary…

Stephanie Lake Company performs Manifesto. Photo: Roy VanDerVegt

Review | Stephanie Lake’s Happiness Manifesto for Dance and Drum

By Kaija Pepper on 20 April 2026 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Dance, Vancouver, West

The concept is straightforward. Bring together nine dancers and nine drummers, and put them all on stage to do what they clearly love: making dance and making music. And it’s enough: Manifesto, by Australia’s Stephanie Lake Company, is a friendly hour-long showcase for 18 performers that made a lively finale to the DanceHouse season at the Vancouver Playhouse April 16-18. The warm, engaging space in which choreographer Stephanie Lake and composer Robin Fox set their music and dance is key. Bosco Shaw’s lighting is for the most part bright and optimistic, letting us really see the individual performers. Not just…

Dinuk Wijeratne: Identity in Motion

By Kaitlyn Chan on 3 April 2026 Classical Music, Contemporary, Interviews, Orchestral, Piano

Canadian composer, conductor and pianist Dinuk Wijeratne is well known for his cross-cultural works, which he describes as “East-West.” “On any given day, I don’t feel either fully Eastern or Western,” says Wijeratne. “Call it a conflict or an identity crisis—but I always think, aren’t I so blessed that I get to try and create a balance for even a few moments in a piece of music?” Born in Sri Lanka, Wijeratne spent his childhood and adolescent years in Dubai. He studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, The Juilliard School, Mannes College and the University of Toronto.…

Photo: Bo Huang

Alice Ping Yee Ho: The Real and the Imagined

By Kaitlyn Chan on 3 April 2026 Classical Music, Contemporary, Interviews, Piano

“I live in two worlds,” says pianist and composer Alice Ping Yee Ho. Born in Hong Kong, Ho studied music in the U.K. and Germany before settling in Toronto. She was deeply impacted both by hearing traditional Chinese music in her youth, as well as her education in the Western classical music canon: “It shaped how I listen and how I create.” Ho says that her Western training helps her compose logically and, almost, mathematically. However, her influences from Chinese music culture encourage her to consider the emotional impact of the piece and sometimes move away from what is the…

Festival Classica 2026: Programming for Modern Tastes

By Justin Bernard on 3 April 2026 Contemporary, Musique populaire, Opera, Orchestral, Piano, Vocal

The 16th edition of Festival Classica, taking place from May 22 to June 14, will continue to extend its repertoire beyond the limits of classical music under the artistic direction of Marc Boucher. La Scena Musicale spoke to some of the leading artists involved in this year’s festival, including composer and arranger Simon Leclerc, whose new adaptation of Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante’s 1998 musical, Notre-Dame de Paris, will be unveiled on June 12. It will be one of three productions offered by Nouvel Opéra Métropolitain in addition to Les Grands classiques de Michel Legrand (June 6) and the opera…

Left: Paige Robinson (Flora) in Opera 5's The Turn of the Screw, 2024; Right: Kate Fogg in Opera 5's Elegies, 2024. Photos: Emily Ding Photography

Opera 5’s Toronto Opera Festival: A Fresh, Canadian Triptych

By Emma Yee on 3 April 2026 Canadian Music, Classical Music, Contemporary, Opera, Toronto, Vocal

Puccini’s Il trittico (The Triptych) conjures up the image of three distinct tapestries, hung side by side. In their second annual Toronto Opera Festival, Opera 5 will imbue it with a fresh, new palette of colours, invigorating Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi with established artists and young talent for performances running June 3-7. In the place of the triptych’s Il tabarro the company presents the world premiere of Cecilia Livingston’s Parḗlios on June 12. Opera 5’s 2025 festival centred on the theme of grief, featuring Rachel Krehm and Ryan Trew’s Come Closer and William Finn’s Elegies. The current Canadian Opera Company…

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