Event Details

The Kindred Spirits Orchestra has performed since 2009, to a great acclaim, sold-out audiences, and standing ovations at the legendary CBC Glenn Gould Studio in downtown Toronto. As of the 2011, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra has also established a 6-concert subscription series at the Flato Markham Theatre, in addition to 3 community-outreach and 2 educational concerts. Led by the charismatic Maestro Kristian Alexander, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra is enjoying an enormous popularity among York Region's residents and continues to attract avid audiences across the Greater Toronto Area.

The Kindred Spirits Orchestra performs a wide range of compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and many others. Ardent supporter of contemporary music, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra created, also in 2011, Markham Contemporary Music Festival, an annual event that has brought to life great pieces of the 20th century by Lutoslavsky, Stravisnky, Philip Glass, Honegger as well as by illustrious Canadian composers such as Garry Kulesha, Brian Current, Larysa Kuzmenko, Daniel Friedman, Kevin Lau, and Constantine Caravassilis. During the past few years alone, the orchestra has regularly worked with internationally renowned soloists such as pianists Christina Quilico, James Parker and Maxim Bernard, violinists Jacques Israelievitch, Joelle Kee and Marc Djokic, cellist Rachel Mercer, soprano Rebecca Whelan, and tenor Keith Klassen, among many others.

This application is for “2020 Markham Contemporary Music Festival”, taking place June 2 to 26, 2020 in several venues in Markham, Richmond Hill, and Unionville including the newly opened Cornell Recital Hall, the International Music Academy, and the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts for the first time. The KSO will also perform at CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio. Festival programming will include:

(1) 4 Concerts: (i) Pulcinella (June 6, Cornell Recital Hall): a modern-day homage to the eighteenth century along with a newly commissioned work; and (ii) Metamorphoses (June 27, Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts, and June 27, CBC Glenn Gould Studio): includes Symphonic Variations by César Franck, Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5; and (iii) Unionville Canada Day Celebration (July 1, Unionville Millennium Theatre): featuring Strauss, Radetzki Marsch, Brahms, Hungarian Dance, Shostakovich, A.L. Weber, (The Phantom of the Opera), Schonberg (Miss Saigon and Les Misérables);

(2) Official opening ceremony (June 2, Cornell Recital Hall);

(3) Open rehearsals (June 5, 6, 9, 16, 19, and 23 at the Cornell Recital Hall);

(4) Open Visit of the World Musical Instruments Collection at the International Music Academy (June 7, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20 at the International Music Academy)

(5) Composition workshops (June 9, 16, and 23 at Cornell Recital Hall); and

(6) Lecture and film series: subjects include Stravinsky and Shostakovich, César Franck, Shostakovich and Stalin (June 10, 15, 21, 25 International Music Academy).