September
12-14
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal
Le Sacre du Printemps
Rafael Payare donnera le coup d’envoi de la 90e saison de l’OSM avec deux œuvres exceptionnelles. Animé d’une incomparable puissance rythmique, Le Sacre du printemps de Stravinsky déploie une farouche énergie à laquelle on ne peut échapper. Une vitalité et une joie presque explosive se manifestent également dans la Messe glagolitique de Janáček.
September
27-28
OSM
Les Mythiques planètes de Holst
L’OSM vous convie à un voyage musical dans le cosmos avec Les Planètes de Holst. Depuis les tuttis fracassants de Mars jusqu’aux sonorités mystérieuses de Neptune, Holst varie les couleurs orchestrales et crée des « peintures d’atmosphères ». En première à Montréal, l’Orchestre interprètera Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes de la compositrice canadienne Nicole Lizée, un concerto pour percussions évoluant en une suite de spirales qui s’entremêlent au fil de l’œuvre.
October
1
October
13-15
True Concord
Songs of America
With his Voiceless Mass, Raven Chacon became the first Native American winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music. This work considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access to these spaces and the land upon which these buildings sit. Songs of America, a signature repertoire for True Concord, includes African-American Spirituals arranged by Moses Hogan and William Grant Still, folk songs by Stephen Foster, including Beautiful Dreamer and Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair and music of the Sonoran Desert.
November
17-18
True Concord
This is How You Love
True Concord celebrates its first-ever Co-Composers-in-Residence, married couple Jocelyn Hagen and Timothy C. Takach, with their Southwest premiere of This Is How You Love. This multi-movement work explores the depths of relationships – infatuation, need, companionship, conflict, compromise, and love. The libretto is a mixture of different poets threaded together with transcripts from couples therapy sessions – the music is immediately accessible and will take you on a deeply meaningful and emotional journey.
December
7
Chapelle de Québec
Bach Christmas Oratorio
Nothing says “Christmas in New York” like hearing our city’s beloved Orchestra of St. Luke’s perform J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at Carnegie Hall. Hearing this joyful, soaring work during the holiday season is an experience to be celebrated by all!
December
14-16
Chapelle de Québec
Bach Christmas Oratorio
With La Chapelle de Québec and four specially selected soloists, Jonathan Cohen offers the complete Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach as an invitation to the holiday festivities. Flamboyant music and spectacular choruses celebrate an age-old tradition.
December
23
Chapelle de Québec
Le Chemin de Noël
Le 23 décembre prochain, Le chemin de Noël revient tout en musique, en lumière, en partage et en douceur pour réchauffer et rassembler les gens à la veille du temps des Fêtes. La population est invitée à participer à cette activité de réjouissances qui fera vivre la magie de Noël par le biais de ses volets intérieur et extérieur. Un événement unique proposant deux expériences distinctes, exclusives et chaleureuses!
January
26-28
True Concord
Mozart & Hagen
The Mozart masterpiece, his powerful C-Minor Mass. This was the first major work performed by True Concord, and particularly appropriate for the 40th anniversary year of the award-winning film Amadeus.
And a new classic, Hagen’s Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. As Jocelyn noted, “…there’s this special thing about synching live music with video – it’s really powerful.” Hagen incorporates images of da Vinci’s writing and art throughout the 35-minute piece, but the focus is on her music.
February
14-18
Chapelle de Québec
Fauré et Duruflé, Deux Requiems
Le Requiem de Fauré baigne dans une lumière d’apaisement et de réconfort. De profondes émotions de sérénité règnent aussi dans le Requiem de Duruflé. Les voix de Magali Simard- Galdès, Julie Boulianne et Jean-François Lapointe s’allient à celles de La Chapelle de Québec pour faire de ces Requiem des instants mémorables.
Feb Mar
28 2
True Concord
The Love of Flight
The fascinating and rarely performed Airborne Symphony is the perfect piece to pay homage to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base—a world premiere of a new suite version focused on the exhilaration of flying and the miracle of flight itself.
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March
20-21
Chapelle de Québec
Fauré et Duruflé, Deux Requiems
With La Chapelle de Québec and four specially selected soloists, Jonathan Cohen offers the complete Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach as an invitation to the holiday festivities. Flamboyant music and spectacular choruses celebrate an age-old tradition.
March
27-28
OSM
St. John Passion
A peerless specialist of the music of Bach, Masaaki Suzuki joins the OSM to conduct the stirring St John Passion. In the hands of the composer, the sacred text is transformed through the music’s accentuation of its tragic character. The Evangelist’s account, suffused with an ardent expressivity, is the common thread of a drama interspersed with contemplative arias. The meditative chorales entrusted to the choir provide the work with its structure, imparting it with a timeless, universal dimension.
April
5-7
True Concord
Gloria & Bernstein
Take Bernstein’s hit musical Candide of French genius Voltaire, mix in the Chichester Psalms, the most played piece worldwide for Bernstein’s Centennial Celebrations, and top it off with the pious and jazzy melodist and 20th-Century French master composer (on his 125th birthday), Poulenc’s glorious Gloria, and you have the ideal True Concord program! Add in the fabulous soprano Nicole Cabell – winner of the Singer of the World Competition, one of the most prestigious prizes won by such luminaries as Barton Hvorostovsky and Terfel – in her True Concord debut. Mozart with SF Opera, Puccini at Grand Tetons, Perfection.
April
21
SMAM
Ode à la Terre
On the eve of Earth Day, this concert is devoted to Nature, as it is evoked, notably, in The Song of Songs. In this love poem from The Bible, which has frequently been set to music, the lovers are compared to all our planet’s many beauties: lilies and roses, an apple tree in the middle of an orchard, gazelles and stags, the song of the dove, fig trees, pomegranate trees, and vines… While John Taverner’s Western Wind Mass is based on a popular song that speaks of the western wind and its “small rain,” Nutshimit, composed by Maurice-Gaston Du Berger to an unpublished text by Innu poet Joséphine Bacon, convinces us of the importance of the Innu’s ancestral territories, places of myths, memory, and identity.
May
9
Chapelle de Québec
Brahms German Requiem
Orchestra of St. Luke’s concludes its 2023–2024 series with a glorious evening of Brahms choral works. The program opens with the first-ever Carnegie Hall performance of the composer’s Begräbnisgesang, a short and deeply personal early work, likely written in remembrance of Brahms’s close friend Robert Schumann. The magnificent German Requiem follows, treating audiences to a singular masterpiece of the choral repertoire that combines sacred music with a profoundly universal and humanistic spirit.
May
19
Podium
Critical Conversations
Voicing the Ecological Crisis: What More Can We Sing and Do?
The ecological crisis (climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc.) is deepening at a frightening pace, leaving many feeling disempowered and demoralized. Moderator Claude Schryer writes in his a calm presence newsletter that ‘the arts can simultaneously comfort the afflicted, inspire the depressed, anticipate the impossible, invigorate the dispirited, catalyze the discouraged, challenge our assumptions, etc. but the arts also have the potential to inflict harm, consciously or unconsciously.’ The Canadian choral community has a history of engagement and foresight with environmental issues. How can the choral arts sector step up further? Building upon interconnections with previous critical conversations, notably on indigenous voices and just choirs, this panel will share their choral-ecological action strategies and explore how to further tackle our current poly-crisis through artistic creation, decreasing carbon footprints and collective political action. Panelists will tackle complex issues, such as complicity and accountability in the ecological crisis, but also what we can ‘sing and do’ more to reimagine a sustainable future for all life on earth. You’ll leave the conversation with a practical reality check while humming with hope. A resource list will be shared with opportunities for further action.
May
25-31
True Concord
Recording Project
August
16-25
Staunton Music Festival
Summer Festival
Each August Staunton Music Festival welcomes over 80 acclaimed professionals from around the world to perform in 30 events. Multiple concerts daily make for an exhilarating immersion in chamber, vocal, and symphonic music. The days are given over to one-hour, free admission programs, while the evenings come alive with longer, ticketed concerts preceded by special dinners and short lectures. And for those who enjoy music after dark, look for the Nightcap concerts that take place at 10:00 pm in interesting spaces downtown.
