Stir Cheat Sheet: Four boundary-busting concerts to experience at Music on Main's Month of Tuesdays

From Caroline Shaw’s pop-tinged Ringdown project to Ryan Davis’s heady looping viola, April means aural adventure at the intimate Fox Cabaret

By Janet Smith

Ringdown. Photo by Leah Vautar

Music on Main presents A Month of Tuesdays at the Fox Cabaret from April 7 to 28

THERE ARE THE tangible things that make Music on Main’s Tuesday-night concert series so popular with its devoted fans. Let’s start with the fact it takes place at the storied Fox Cabaret, a club that offers an instant relaxed, intimate setting for music that might feel out of reach elsewhere. The impeccable programming? It pushes genre boundaries, mashes conceptions of pop and classical, of soundscape and score, and generally challenges expectations—around, say, the role of the viola, or the way voices and synths can interweave.

The four offerings this year take a special place in Music on Main’s 20th-anniversary season, with a tribute to a trailblazing local composer, the return of one of the organization’s favourite artists, and much more.

Below, a deeper dive into what to look forward to each Tuesday this month.

#1

Ringdown

April 7 at 7:30 pm

Caroline Shaw has long been a draw for Music on Main audiences, whether it’s been her soaring microphone vocalizations for Action at a Distance’s dance work Graveyards and Gardens or lending her voice to “By and By”, her haunting, intimate take on traditional American bluegrass and gospel songs, with the Calder Quartet. The Pulitzer Prize–winning artist, who also plays the violin, is known for her unaffected playfulness, as well as the pop sensibility and classical knowledge that she brings to contemporary music.

This strong kickoff to the month is a chance to catch her work as part of the duo Ringdown with Danni Lee Parpan, a vocalist and folk‑pop singer‑songwriter who draws on similar influences. Together—working across synths, strings, and keyboards—they conjure lush, almost cinematic electro-pop textures, always with heartfelt lyrics. Both have spring water–clear, ethereal voices, fusing beautifully together. Subjects range from the cosmos and civil rights, to loneliness and love.

Ryan Davis

#2

Radia/Ryan Davis

April 14 at 7:30 pm

Violist Ryan Davis redefines his undersung stringed instrument, building intricately layered soundscapes through looping and electronic effects. The artist, who works under the name Radia for his solo music, also brings considerable classical technique to his sound; the Canberra, Australia–born and Saskatoon-raised musician holds a master’s degree from Yale School of Music and recently joined UBC’s music faculty as an assistant professor.

More than anything, Davis’s music, much of it self-composed, brings the yearning, gorgeous resonance of the viola out of the shadows and reveals the instrument’s true versatility. Give his 2021 EP Of Glow & Abandon a listen, the single “Colour You Like” building to a crescendo of driving, skittering rhythms, layering percussive plucking with bowing and vocals to create a new sound that feels fresh and exuberant, with sharp contemporary edge (see video at bottom). It’s heady, transportive stuff.

Hildegard Westerkamp

#3

Hildegard Westerkamp @ 80

April 21 at 7:30 pm

Whether it was composing a soundscape from recordings in old-growth forests or creating a Kits Beach Soundwalk built from the murmur of small waves, seagulls, and lapping water, Westerkamp has, as Music on Main puts it, transformed “the act of listening into an art form”. Born in Germany, she moved to Canada in the late ’60s, studying music at UBC and eventually joining Murray Schafer’s World Soundscape Project—forever influenced by his ideas around acoustic ecology.

At this event, MoM marks the 80th birthday Westerkamp celebrates this month, with pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, cellist Norman Adams, and recorder and electronics artist Terri Hron performing her soundscapes live—bringing the great outdoors inside for one evening.

Laura Bowler. Photo by Harald Hoffmann for Ricordi

#4

Laura Bowler’s Deconstructing Pierrot

April 28 at 7:30 pm

Dubbed everything from a “demolition” to an “interrogation”, U.K. composer, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Laura Bowler’s take on Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is considered a masterpiece of 20th-century Expressionism. She recasts it through a contemporary queer lens in this rendition, backed by Vancouver’s own all-star Standing Wave Ensemble. The co-commission by Red Note Ensemble, Music on Main, and Ensemble Offspring premiered at Scotland’s soundfestival in 2024.

Anyone who caught Bowler’s FFF at Music on Main’s Modulus Festival seven years ago knows she’s an arresting performer with serious vocal chops. Rest assured she’ll dig at the chaos, anxiety, and unfulfilled desires that lie within Albert Giraud’s poetry in Pierrot Lunaire—possibly while wearing a surreal harlequin outfit like the one she sported for the production’s presentation at Australia’s Ensemble Offspring.

Working across music-theatre and opera, the in-demand talent has been featured around the globe by such groups and festivals as the Royal Opera House, Austria’s Ensemble Phace, and France’s Festival Musica. In other words, it’s a suitably rebellious, unexpected way to end a series that nods to the past but steps boldly into the future.  

---

Related Articles