Eight-concert season full of crowd favourites

Familiar faces dot the list of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra’s concerts for its new season.

Fan favourites such as American pianists Simone Dinnerstein and Awadagin Pratt, Winnipeg saxophonist Allen Harrington, Vancouver violinists Timothy and Nikki Chooi, and violinist-conductor Aislinn Nosky have scheduled return engagements for 2024-25.

The eight-concert season begins Sept. 25 when three Alberta-based Indigenous performers — Cree-Métis baritone Jonathon Adams, Cree flutist-composer Jessica McMann and Cree actor and video artist Tyson Houseman — team up with the MCO and conductor Anne Manson for a baroque-focused program titled Lament.

The concert is scheduled to take place at the new Desautels Concert Hall at the University of Manitoba, which will be in the final stages of construction during the summer.

MCO concertmaster Karl Stobbe and pianist Andrew Armstrong are the stars of the Oct. 23 concert — back at the orchestra’s home at the Crescent Arts Centre — which will highlight works by Bach and Shostakovich.

Dinnerstein and Pratt, who often perform together in concert and sometimes at the same piano, perform double piano concertos by Bach and Mozart on Nov. 14.

David Braid, a pianist and composer who has won Junos in both classical and jazz categories, joins Manson and violinist Mark Fewer on Nov. 21 for an evening of contemporary works by composers Steve Reich, Jessie Montgomery, Nicole Lizée and Bryce Dessner.

Harrington, a professor at the University of Manitoba’s Desautels Faculty of Music, will perform Beamish’s saxophone concerto on March 13, 2025, with David Bui, assistant conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the podium.

Nosky, once the MCO’s artist-in-residence, will perform and conduct the April 9 concert, Solace, which will also showcase Caitlin Broms-Jacobs, the orchestra’s principal oboe.

Cris Derksen, who has Cree and Mennonite ancestry, is the guest soloist May 1 when the MCO takes the stage at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The cellist began her career accompanying Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq and his since struck out on her own, earning a Juno nomination for her compositions that blend electronics with the cello’s smooth tone.

The Chooi twins bring their violins once again to the MCO to close out the season May 14.

Subscriptions are available at themco.ca, with earlybird prices ranging from $179 to $274.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall