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.
Vancouver International Dance Festival
From March 4–14, VIDF 2026 transforms our beautiful city into a hub for global dance that challenges norms and inspires connection.
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LOST DOG FRIDAY: ONLY A VISITOR & LEAH ABRAMSON
Only A Visitor released their first record as a quintet in 2015, debuting as a quirky and novel project that featured inter-woven three part harmonies over an instrumental section with twisty, rhythmic arrangements. Over the years they’ve released four records, with the most recent being Decay (Mint Records, 2023.) While each member of the group has their own distinct musical projects (Streams, Future Star, Last Ark Out, Kevin Romain’s Salience Network etc), Only A Visitor is a project that funnels all their experiences and sonic languages in tandem. Celebrating ten years of making music together, the group is reuniting on March 20th 2026 at the Hargrove.
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Sonic Boom Festival of New Music
Sonic Boom is VPM’s annual showcase of new composition culled from the fertile creative network of BC’s composer community, spanning a generational and unmatched stylistic array, performed by Vancouver’s finest. This year we are presenting at the intimate, historic Firehall Arts Centre and will include work by masters from Jeffrey Ryan to the young lion of New Gamelan Ryan Swaryandana!
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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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THE COLLABORATORS
Paul Kyle Gallery proudly announces the opening of The Collaborators, a pivotal retrospective of Nettie Wild, one of Canada’s leading documentary artists. The exhibition is an inaugural tracing of Wild’s evolution from film to public installation, unfolding over decades through collaboration and sustained attention.
Guided by curiosity and perception, Wild and friends reclaim “documentary” by pushing past the first image, framing the familiar in unfamiliar ways to yield the unexpected. Wild’s critically acclaimed films have brought her audiences behind the frontlines and headlines of revolutionary change. Her installations build on this work, provoking vital reflection on emergent environmental issues. She was the recipient of a Governor General’s Award in Media Arts in 2023, the BC Film Critics Circle Award in 2010, and was named one of British Columbia’s “most influential women” by the Vancouver Sun.
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The 7th Sound of Dragon Music Festival
Sound of Dragon Society presents the 7th Sound of Dragon Music Festival on April 2 to 5, 2026. As Vancouver’s biennial celebration of Asian sounds, the festival redefines Chinese music with ground-breaking cross-cultural programming, presenting Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra (Taiwan), PhoneNX Ensemble (Toronto), 88 Strings, Vancouver Erhu Quartet, Multicultural Wind Ensemble and more.
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