Ottawa Chamberfest is offering a gift of music to warm up this bleak winter. The second half of the 2020-21 concert series starts on Jan. 16 with the Montreal baroque quartet Pallade Musica and continues with seven more concerts that will include artists such as Jeremy
More than 600 public libraries across Canada will be taking part in a first-ever national e-book club when the new year begins. The book Canadians will be asked to read from jan. 1 to Jan. 31 is Vi by Kim Thuy. The participating libraries, representing more
This is a brave and important step taken by the NAC's English Theatre. Here is some of the announcement: The National Arts Centre English Theatre, in partnership with Black Theatre Workshop, today announced an unprecedented shared curation model for the national stage. NAC English Theatre has committed
By Natasha Gauthier After weeks of exciting, inclusive truly diverse programming, NACO can be forgiven for presenting one ultra-traditional, all-Beethoven concert. Especially with the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birthday coming up on Dec. 16. Saturday night’s livestream featured two works from Beethoven’s “heroic” period: the Violin
By Natasha Gauthier In her video introduction to her 2008 piece What Keeps Me Awake, Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón describes how the New York classical music establishment made people like her feel unwelcome. She describes the piece as a kind of exorcism for the negative
By Natasha Gauthier I’m not going to lie: sitting in a concert hall for the first time in eight months was weird. Maybe not as weird as Jonas Kaufmann’s new cover of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, released earlier this week, which
By Natasha Gauthier After a COVID-induced absence of almost eight months, the National Arts Centre Orchestra returned to Southam Hall Saturday night for the first in a series of weekly livecast concerts. Many things have changed since the orchestra’s last performance in March. The hall seats were
COVID-19 has forced many changes on the performing arts — some devastating some imaginative. Necessity being the mother of invention as Aesop said. Musicians have been hosting concerts on front porches. Some have been standing up in front of a row of cars in drive-in
In this grim year, we are all getting a lesson in sorrow from the loss of our freedoms and the loss of loved ones. We are mourning almost 9,200 souls taken by the COVID-19 plague. Yes we are learning much about grief. Into this black and white
You'd think Carissa Klopoushak had enough on her plate. She's a violinist with the NAC Orchestra. She's a co-funder of the Ironwood Quartet. She started and remains the artistic director of a music festival in her hometown of Saskatoon, COVID notwithstanding. She's part of the team
