Season 2026-27 — Vancouver New Music

Vancouver New Music’s 2026-27 season gathers a remarkable group of artists from across the world - Japan, Korea, Egypt, Australia, US, Canada - each with a distinct cultural identity and singular instrumental voice. In their unique ways, they explore experimental performance practices at the intersection of acoustic and electronic sound.

Our exciting new season launches with the highly anticipated opening night of this year's VNM Festival, Open Frequencies (Oct 22-24) featuring Kuniko Kato Quartet (Japan) performing a program celebrating Steve Reich’s 90th birthday. The program will showcase Reich’s complex and beautiful percussion compositions in new adaptations specially curated by Kato with Reich. The evening will also be dedicated to Frances McGrath in honour of her legacy gift. The rest of this three-day festival will present internationally acclaimed and emerging artists working at the forefront of experimental, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural sound practices: cellist Okkyung Lee (Korea/USA), vocalist and sound artist Nadah El Shazly (Egypt/Montreal) with harpist Sarah Pagé (Montreal), and BC artists Meredith Bates (Salt Spring Island) and Piu (Nanaimo). This season also marks the return of the One Page Score Project, our popular series that invites community members to create graphic scores that will then be performed by Plastic Acid Orchestra (Jan 23). Other season highlights include vocalist Charmaine Lee (Australia/USA) and interdisciplinary artist x/o (Vancouver) (Feb 20), the eighth instalment of our community-focused PARALLELS series with koto player Miyama McQueen-Tokita (Australia/Japan) (Mar 20), and sound artist Olivia Block (USA) and organist Angelique Po (Vancouver) performing on the city’s largest pipe organ (Apr 24).