Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra hosts summer concert series June 27 and July 1, 7, 8

Saga of global sounds spotlights award-winning composers: Vancouver’s Rita Ueda, and the Netherlands’ Joël Bons

SPONSORED POST BY Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra

Joël Bons. Photo by Daniel Bons

Rita Ueda. Photo by Alistair Eagle

The Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO) presents an adventurous four-part summer concert series on June 27 and July 1, 7, and 8, featuring exciting new chamber music performed on instruments from all over the world.

The series encompasses works-in-progress, new arrangements, and world premieres by emerging and established composers from Canada, the Netherlands, the United States, and Iran. Highlights include prize-winning pieces by acclaimed Vancouver composer Rita Ueda, and Netherlands-based composer Joël Bons.

On June 27, the orchestra presents a workshop performance by the Borderland Ensemble at Pyatt Hall at 4:30 pm. The project brings together five virtuoso performers playing traditional Indian and Persian instruments: Sharanjeet Singh Mangh on sitar, Sunny Matharu on tabla, Sina Ettehad on kamanche, Saina Khaledi on santoor, and Ali Razmi on tar and setar.

Next up, celebrate Canada Day on July 1 at 7:30 pm with Sounds Global in Concert at St. Andrew’s United Church, an evening of music guaranteed to expand sonic horizons. It features world premieres of new works created for an intercultural wind quintet—flute, oboe, clarinet, Persian ney, and Chinese sheng—developed through the VICO’s annual Sounds Global Composers’ Workshop.

July 7 at 8 pm, catch the Summer Academy Concert at the Annex, showcasing new pieces conceived during VICO’s bi-annual Summer Academy, for two intercultural quartets and a tentet conducted by Janna Sailor. Also on the bill is As the first spring blossoms awaken through the snow by Ueda, who won the 2022 Jules Léger Prize for New Canadian Chamber Music.

On July 8, in the triumphant finale of their summer concert series, the VICO (conducted again by Sailor) performs the world premiere of ripple, pitch, rise, ritual by Vancouver-based composer Robyn Jacob, and a new arrangement of Nomaden by visiting composer Joël Bons.

Robyn Jacob. Photo by Sewari Campillo.

Bons is founder of the VICO’s Amsterdam-based sister orchestra, the Atlas Ensemble, which brings together musicians from China, Japan, Iran, India, Syria, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, Turkey, and Europe. Nomaden, originally written for French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Atlas Ensemble, won the prestigious 2019 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

More information on the lineup of events and tickets to each concert can be found at VICO.

Post sponsored by Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra.

VICO in rehearsal with Janna Sailor, February 2021. Photo by Alistair Eagle.