New Music Festival's Gala Concert Unbelievable

I had originally written this last night as 13 tweets, so it seems a little choppy as a blog post.




The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival Gala Concert began last evening with the world premiere of Randolph Peters’ work Io. It flowed beautifully with a delightful mix of colours. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra was in fantastic form.



We then heard the world premiere of Vincent Ho’s new percussion concerto, The Shaman. It teleported us to another dimension, not of this universe. Dame Evelyn Glennie’s performance was spectaculactic (sorry, spectacular + galactic)! There was an immediate standing ovation, which was so well deserved! She then performed an encore which was a fantastic contrast – slower, melodic, heavenly.



The final work was John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1. As the program notes stated: it is “hailed as one of the most important pieces of our time, the work expresses his personal response to the AIDS epidemic during the late 1980s”. He spoke eloquently in introduction explaining his motivation of expressing memory of friends lost to AIDS. He converged those feelings so well in the music.  It was passionate, expressive and deeply moving.



Thnx to the New Music Festival for the best concert I’ve ever attended in my whole life. (At least my life so far!)