Have you ever heard an ice instrument?
The Winnipeg New Music Festival is known for its cutting edge concerts and out of box venues
Are you new to New Music? Here’s a primer on the style. New music is just that: new, mostly classical music written by living composers, though visual and literary art forms can often be a part of a New Music composition.
One of the best times and places to listen to the world’s best New Music is in Winnipeg, at the end of January. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s annual Winnipeg New Music Festival (WNMF) has become a trailblazer of its genre. It kicks off January 25 this year.
The festival came to be in the 1990s thanks to Bramwell Tovey, then WSO artistic director, who returns this year to conduct a concert, and the WSO’s first composer-in-residence Glenn Buhr. When Alexander Mickelthwaite, became artist director of the WSO, he was a dynamic face behind the WNMF. The 2019 edition is the first under the artistic direction of Daniel Raiskin who joined the WSO in August. And the line up for this year’s festival is promising indeed with cutting eye acts such as Animals as Leaders and Roomful of Teeth.
Daniel Raiskin Dirigent/conductor Photo: Marco Borggreve
Though it has a world class reputation, out-of-towners who attend are constantly amazed by the full-house crowds when its -26C degrees outside. Which it usually is in Winnipeg in late January. Night after night performers and fans of the genre fill the venues.
Most of the concerts take place at the Centennial Concert Hall which is transformed into a multidisciplinary venue. There’s art on display: this year’s edition features the art of Kenneth Lavallee whose outdoor murals you’ve seen on buildings like Deer + Almond Restaurant and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. There’s cool furniture to lounge on in the foyer, loaned from local furniture stores, and even food for sale. You can have a sandwich and a glass of wine while listening to a concert.
But this is New Music, known for breaking ground. And it’s Winnipeg, so some out-of-the-box venues are also a signature of the festival. There was the memorable concert one year at the Pan Am pool, with musicians playing on the diving boards. Other concerts have taken place in the cavernous basement of The Bay.
This year the WNMF opens with a characteristically unique event: A custom-designed ice amphitheatre on the frozen Assiniboine River at The Forks. The ice theatre is a collaboration between architect Peter Hargraves who has designed quite a few of Winnipeg’s Warming Huts and Norwegian artist and multi-instrumentalist Terje Isungset who will perform a suite of original music, with vocalist Maria Skranes as well as percussionists from the University of Manitoba music program. They will be performing on ice instruments that Isungset will have freshly carved for the performance.
And throughout the weeklong festival there will be a series of free lunch time mini-performances at places as unexpected as the Canadian Human Rights Museum, Union Station, Portage Place and The Manitoba Legislature.
Here are some of the highlighted artists you’ll find at the festival.
