Season Lineup

2024-2025

All the Madmen

Saturday, October 19, 2024   7:30 p.m.

Stick&Bow

Krystina Marcoux – marimba
Juan Sebastián Delgado – cello

Music has the tremendous and mysterious power to transform, to make us think and re-think and, ideally, to move forward. This trailblazing duo opens the season with a program from the past and the present, featuring artists who have tried to make this world a better place through the power of musical expression. Do not miss this compelling evening of music by Marin Marais, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Dmitri Shostakovich, Violetta Parra, Nina Simone, John Lennon, David Bowie, Claude Vivier, Supertramp, Jean Leloup, Jason Noble, and others.

Photo by Hans Andia

J.S. Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow

Saturday, December 7, 2024   7:30 p.m.

Tom Allen – storyteller/trombone
Lori Gemmell – harp
Carson Becke – piano
Julia MacLaine – cello
Meghan Lindsay – soprano

A blend of music, storytelling and historical research illuminating a little-known period of the composer’s life. Johann Sebastian Bach is usually seen as the wise, old man of Western Music but he didn’t begin his working life that way. At eighteen years of age, in his first job as an organist, and beginning as a composer but already a spectacular performer, the young genius got into such trouble that the only thing he could do was walk away. This show takes us along on that trip: a 400 km odyssey to a glittering northern port city with street fights, big business, insight, fulfillment, the father figure he didn’t know he needed and, quite possibly, love.

Photo of Carson Becke by Tam Lan Photography

Sunday, January 26, 2025   2:00 p.m.

Trio Uchida-Crozman-Chiu

Robert Uchida – violin
Cameron Crozman – cello
Philip Chiu – piano

Experience the dynamic musical friendship of three of Canada’s esteemed chamber musicians as they celebrate captivating romantic music with Mel (Mélanie) Bonis’ Soir ! Matin ! and Rebecca Clarke’s striking Piano Trio; as well as folk-inspired music with Frank Martin’s Trio on Irish Folk Tunes and Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 “Dumky”.

Death and the Maiden

Saturday, March 8, 2025   7:30 p.m.

New Orford String Quartet

Jonathan Crow – violin
Andrew Wan – violin
Sharon Wei – viola
Brian Manker – cello

Four Canadian musicians with stellar pedigrees form the JUNO Award-winning New Orford String Quartet. Toronto Symphony and Montreal Symphony concertmasters Andrew Wan and Jonathan Crow, Montreal Symphony’s principal cellist Brian Manker and the dynamic violist Sharon Wei promise you an exciting musical evening in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet in D minor, Yume (Dreams) – a new piece commissioned from composer Ian Cusson, of Métis (Georgian Bay Métis Community) and French-Canadian descent, and Franz Schubert’s famous Death and the Maiden.

Photo by Dahlia Katz

Light Exists in Spring

Saturday, April 12, 2025   7:30 p.m.

Fierbois

Caitlin Broms-Jacobs – oboe
Madeline Hildebrand – piano

Known for their joyful and electrifying performances, pianist Madeline Hildebrand and oboist Caitlin Broms-Jacobs have been fast friends and musical collaborators since 2014.

This duo concludes the season with an optimistic and exploratory program combining favourites such as Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Spring Waters, with sumptuous lyrical pieces by Eastern European and Soviet composers (Mikhail Glinka – Dances from Ruslan and Lyudmila; Gayane Chebotaryan – Six Preludes; Pavel Hass – Suite for Oboe and Piano; Fikret Amirov – Nocturne), and featuring several of the duo’s own arrangements.