On Monday the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra will open its new season with a programme packed full of Mozart. Included in the lineup will be the composer's Second Horn Concerto played by a young Canadian studying abroad. The performance by Martin Mangrum was made possible by an
Pina Bausch’s visceral, devastatingly beautiful setting of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring has trailed its muddy feet on stages all over the world. But Bausch’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, has only danced it to live orchestral accompaniment a handful of times. Ottawa joined that short list Thursday
Canada turns 150. Finland turns 100. Nothing like a couple of round numbers to focus the mind. The two anniversaries certainly did just that for Alexander Shelley and the musical team inside the National Arts Centre. And they started thinking big and in the direction of
When the National Arts Centre approached Drew Hayden Taylor a couple of years ago to write a sesquicentennial play about Sir John A. Macdonald from an Indigenous perspective, the First Nations playwright was initially bemused. “I don’t usually make a living writing about dead, white politicians,”
Canadian composer Matthew Whittall has made Finland his home for the past 16 years and has thrived. One of his most recent works is Nameless Seas and it was written as a commission for a Finnish festival. Angela Hewitt got involved and urged the National
On the eve of a major announcement about the future of Canadian cultural policy, a parade of homegrown performers, producers and creators were in the Sir John A. Macdonald building across Wellington Street from the Centre Block underlining the variety of the stories we tell to
By Floriane Bonneville Afghanistan mission veterans will have to wait longer for a monument commemorating the conflict after the Canadian War Museum recently balked at plans to place the memorial just west of its LeBreton Flats location. Some veterans say they don’t understand why the
By Natalie Harmsen The National Capital Commission has given the green light to a range of projects that will brighten Ottawa’s downtown core at night and attempt to put the city in the same league as Paris and other dramatically illuminated European capitals. The NCC’s board of
By Kelly Millar and Nathaniel Dove As it considers a decision on a purchase, Carleton University has already received offers of major donations for the possible purchase of Dominion-Chalmers United Church as a performing arts hub. The university is now expected to decide by the end of
The musical journey of Miguel de Armas and Yasmina Proveyer has been very much a partnership. The next part of their on-going story unfolds Saturday in a concert at Southminster United Church in Old Ottawa South. But it began in Cuba where they were married
