Articles — Stir

Music review: Heavenly singing in Vancouver Opera’s Rigoletto lights up a dark Victorian world

Easing off some of the more disturbing themes and melodrama, the production feels somehow lighter, stripped-down, and relatably human

MUSICJanet SmithOctober 27, 2025Vancouver Opera, Homepage feature, Vancouver Civic Theatres

Canadian pianist Louis Lortie plays Ravel’s Piano Concertos with the VSO, November 14 and 15

Program also features George Benjamin’s Concerto for Orchestra, dedicated to the memory of British composer Oliver Knussen

MUSICStir VancouverOctober 25, 2025Partner Content, VSO, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

At the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, departed loved ones draw near in Spirit Encounters

Mexican-born artist Gerardo Avila helps celebrate the Day of the Dead and highlights the joys of the holiday through the magical migration of monarch butterflies

Glitch Theatre hosts the world premiere of Faye’s Room by Alex K. Masse, November 8 to 23

Production tells the story of an autistic lesbian who gets trapped in a magical sensory room with her least favourite coworker

THEATREStir VancouverOctober 24, 2025Partner Content, Glitch Theatre, Realwheels Theatre

Big Top’s dark musical tones a natural fit for the unsettling silent-movie vision of The Unknown

One of the weirdest Hollywood films ever made helped bring local bandleader Scott McLeod back to shadowy instrumental soundscapes

SCREEN, MUSICJanet SmithOctober 24, 2025Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, Tod Browning

Vancouver Chamber Choir performs the rarely heard Eton Choirbook, November 21

Kari Turunen directs 10 singers in a concert of English sacred music composed during the late 15th century

MUSICStir VancouverOctober 24, 2025Partner Content, Vancouver Chamber Choir

Florent Vollant, Innu reflects on the extraordinary life of a Quebec music icon, October 24

Visions Ouest and Alliance Française present moving documentary on singer-songwriter behind Kashtin

Rebecca Baker-Grenier and Gordon Dick receive this year's Polygon Award in First Nations Art

BC Achievement Foundation also named Kari Morgan the Crabtree McLennan Emerging Artist and presented the Award of Distinction to Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun

ART & DESIGNStir VancouverOctober 23, 2025Partner Content, BC Achievement Foundation, Polygon Award

New Mimosa String Quintet goes big on Boccherini at Early Music Vancouver

Acclaimed cellist Christina Mahler explains how she was captured by musical and technical innovations of the unjustly overlooked 18th-century composer

MUSICJanet SmithOctober 23, 2025Early Music Vancouver, Mimosa String Quintet

Surrey Civic Theatres presents award-winning musician Jeremy Dutcher at Surrey Arts Centre, November 14

Two-time Polaris Music Prize–winner combines traditional Wolastoqey melodies and daring orchestral compositions with remarkable tenor vocals

Theatre review: Pacific Theatre’s remount of Wakey, Wakey feels like offbeat celebration of simply being present

With the company’s own circumstances in flux, this quirkily poignant meditation from a realm between life and death takes on new resonance

THEATREJanet SmithOctober 23, 2025Pacific Theatre

Carousel Theatre for Young People hosts Parents are a Drag, November 22 and 23

Zee Zee Theatre production is a dress-up spectacular starring local drag queens Peach Cobblah and Isolde N. Barron

Vancouver Cantata Singers’ In Paradisum reaches for transcendence, November 1

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor joins other works that search for spiritual heights

MUSICJanet SmithOctober 22, 2025Vancouver Cantata Singers, choral

OUROFEST brings electrifying street dance to Massey Theatre, November 14 and 15

Mainstage performances presented by OURO Collective include Greece’s TARANTISM, German-American B-boy RubberLegz, and more

DANCE, FESTSStir VancouverOctober 22, 2025Partner Content, Ouro Collective, New Works, OUROFEST, Massey Theatre

Stir Q&A: Shelter tackles homelessness through art at Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival

Radix Theatre project helps put paint supplies in the hands of marginalized artists whose works will show on bus shelters and at November 4 art sale

Western Front highlights Basque artist Itziar Okariz's Dream Diary and Ocean Breath, October 30

Two live performance works explore language, sound, and the body

ART & DESIGNStir VancouverOctober 22, 2025Partner Content, Western Front, Itziar Okariz

In Anne Plamondon’s Myokine, seven dancers serve as messengers of hope

Montreal choreographer’s post-pandemic piece, inspired by a type of molecule secreted by moving bodies, comes to the Firehall Arts Centre

DANCEJanet SmithOctober 22, 2025Firehall Arts Centre, FIREHALL, Anne Plamondon, Homepage feature

Royal Winnipeg Ballet unveils 2026 B.C. tour culminating in Vancouver with Carmina Burana and T’əl: The Wild Man of the Woods

Exhilarating double bill featuring a virtuosic classic and a historic West Coast premiere lands here February 9 and 10, 2026

DANCEStir VancouverOctober 22, 2025Partner Content, Royal Winnipeg Ballet

Through musical connection, Luke Wallace conjures hope at the Kay Meek Arts Centre, October 22 to 24

The veteran folk songwriter mixes musical warmth and political urgency to forge new approaches to the world’s biggest shared challenges

MUSICJanet SmithOctober 21, 2025Kay Meek Arts Centre

Urban Ink hosts the sixth annual TRANSFORM Festival at the Vancouver Playhouse starting November 6

Presented in collaboration with The Cultch, multidisciplinary event features an all-star lineup of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists

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