Our Recommendations
Indulge your appetite for arts and culture.
With so many exciting arts and culture events happening you can feel overwhelmed. The Music on Main Team is here to help! We’ve carefully chosen a list of wonderful digital and live events to discover and experience. Whether you’re looking for a theatrical diversion or a blockbuster art show, some new dance or a classical concerto, our recommendations is a list of must-see events whenever you’re looking for a hit of culture. Make sure to check back often, as we are always scouting fun events that we think you’ll love!
Our Recommendations are must-see events, some from our Vancouver home base and a few from across the globe that we think you’ll enjoy. We’re your trusted source that you’ll want to come back to every time you’re looking for something new and exciting to discover. If you’re looking for only Music on Main events check here.
James Ehnes Plays Beethoven
Celebrate the 50th birthday of internationally renowned violinist and friend to the VSO, James Ehnes, as he presents Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Maestro Tausk and the VSO also welcome Krisztina Szabó to perform Jeffrey Ryan’s Miss Carr in Seven Scenes, a series of songs celebrating the iconic British Columbian painter. Dive into Swim, an invigorating work by Cassandra Miller whose compositions have been described by The New Yorker as “engulfing… music that reminds us how to cry.”
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Ravel’s Boléro
Feel the beat with an evening of pulsing music led by Conductor Naomi Woo. Haydn’s “Drumroll” Symphony kicks things off on a thrilling note, alongside Ravel’s iconic Boléro with driving snare drum and one of the most unforgettable climaxes in classical music. Performed at the BBC Proms in 2022 by percussionist Colin Currie, Nicole Lizée’s concerto for percussion and orchestra, Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes, is a tour-de-force inspired by techniques found in stop-motion film and photography.
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INFINITY
The season continues with INFINITY, featuring two of the world’s foremost and truly masterful choreographic voices. Crystal Pite’s Frontier is back following its unforgettable 2024 Ballet BC debut, and the work of Jiří Kylián makes a triumphant return to our stage with the visionary 27’52”.
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MAO FUJITA, piano
After his impressive Canadian debut on our stage in 2023, we were determined to bring this remarkable young Japanese pianist back as soon as possible. For his first VRS appearance he played an all-Mozart program at our request. We were amply rewarded… it’s quite rare to hear a performer of Mao’s age play Mozart so wonderfully. This time his program will illustrate the incredible breadth of his talent.
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Ex Machina & Côté Danse (Quebec City & Toronto)
Since its writing, circa 1599-1601, William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark has been subject to countless interpretations.
Eschewing words, Ex Machina + Côté Danse’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark reinvents the archetypal drama into something raw and immediate. Canonical soliloquies that parse the darkest of human instincts and actions: corruption, suicide, betrayal and murder find a riveting new form.
Expanding upon their previous collaboration Frame by Frame (inspired by the work of visionary animator Norman McLaren), co-creators Robert Lepage and Guillaume Côté bring their respective genius to Shakespeare’s most famous work. Côté embodies the central character, wrestling with existential questions of being and nothingness, while Lepage, a master of multiple theatrical disciplines, infuses the Bard’s epic tale of intergenerational trauma with contemporary relevance.
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End of Greatness
End of Greatness is a new multidisciplinary performance by friends and longtime collaborators Veda Hille and Maiko Yamamoto. Through songs and stories about moss, mushrooms, sisterhood, parenthood and a few big cosmological ideas, the audience gets swept up on a wild hunt — from the forest floor to the edges of the known universe.
What are the systems that are taking us down? What are the systems that are keeping us alive? Is cake at the centre of it all?
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