Vancouver New Music unveils 2025-26 season featuring American musician JJJJJerome Ellis, Bali DJ Barbara Pleaser, and more

Shows range across disciplines, from the Australian dance-and-drumming offering Manifesto to the roundtable discussion Listening as Activism

By Emily Lyth

JJJJJerome Ellis. Photo by Marc J. Franklin

SCULPTURAL SOUND INSTALLATIONS and song-infused shadow theatre are just a couple of the genre-melding performance styles Vancouver New Music is offering up next season.

The organization’s just-announced 2025-26 lineup launches at VIVO Media Arts Centre from September 13 to 28 with Vancouver-based soundscape artist Yota Kobayashi’s Shiki & Kū, an immersive audiovisual installation that weaves spatial sound with cultural symbolism. It’s composed of two distinct works that interact with one another: Shinshiki, which is based on the Japanese philosophical concept of shiki (a form or tangible reality), and Kūsou, rooted in kū (emptiness or impermanence). 

Teamwork is at the heart of Shiki & Kū. It was made in collaboration with local flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor, Italian ensemble Quartetto Maurice, and Japanese artists Ryo Kanda, Rurihiko Hara, and Aiko Hatanaka. The work is a copresentation by VIVO Media Arts and Formscape Arts Society in partnership with VNM and IM4 Lab.

VNM Festival 2025: Whispered Folds will run from October 16 to 18 at the Annex. Expect experimental performances from eight artists: Vancouver’s Brady Marks and Parmela Attariwala, Montreal’s Émilie Payeur and Erin Gee, JJJJJerome Ellis and Anaïs Maviel from the U.S., Argentinian-American Cecilia Lopez, and Mexican-Belgian Vica Pacheco. An installation called Murmurs of Memory, presented in partnership with the Vancouver Public Library, will also be on display during the festival at the Central Library branch.

Four concerts throughout the season come courtesy of this year’s On Curation Mentorship Project, which unites emerging Canadian curators with established mentors. First up, Bali-based DJ Barbara Pleaser—who is also cofounder of the queerpunk band BANANACH—is exploring what club resistance could look like as a practice of care at Red Gate on November 15, curated by Simon Grefiel and mentor Aki Onda. Curator Anju Singh and mentor Raven Chacon will bring Artifacts I: Zero Input Enclosure Movement (ZIEM), an eight-channel sculptural sound installation by Winnipeg’s AO Roberts, to the Annex on February 14, 2026.

Back at the Annex on April 11, 2026, curator Freya Zinovieff and mentor Laura Netz have put together the roundtable discussion and performance Listening as Activism. The venue will also host curator Terri Hron and mentor Peter Hatch with The Voynich Manifesto on May 9, 2026, featuring shadow-theatre duo Mind of a Snail with two vocalists.

Vancouver New Music has a couple more concerts in store for audiences. In a copresentation with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts and Indian Summer Festival on November 18, genre-defying vocalist ganavya will take to the Chan Shun Concert Hall stage. The artist born in New York and raised in Tamil Nadu, India will mark her Vancouver debut by singing transcendent tracks off her just-released album Nilam.

And from April 16 to 18, 2026, Australia’s award-winning Stephanie Lake Company will tour Manifesto to the Vancouver Playhouse, co-presented with DanceHouse. In the explosive piece, nine dancers and nine drummers channel catharsis through ancient rituals, with music composed by Robin Fox.

Tickets to all performances go on sale through Vancouver New Music on September 2.  

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