The New Music Festival will fill Winnipeg theatres with music starting on Jan. 28 and in its 22nd year the festival still lives up to the word new in its name.
“Every year is completely different,” says Vincent Ho, co-curator for the festival, alongside Alexander Mickelthwate. “Each year has its own personality and this year I would say that every night has its own personality. We really wanted to curate each evening to be able to stand on its own.”
It will be Ho’s sixth year as the composer-in-residence with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (WSO), and he says that every year is more exciting.
Ho describes the festival as an “anything goes” type of celebration. For those who may have previously been wary of the festival or ignorantly believed symphonic music not to be exciting – the New Music Festival might just be the thing to change your mind.
Aside from featuring well-known, award-winning pieces, the festival will also feature an evening with dancers from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet on stage, one of the world’s most celebrated percussionists—Evelyn Glennie, the youngest woman to receive the title of “Dame”—and Radiohead member Jonny Greenwood presenting the North American premiere of his score for the film There Will Be Blood.
This year, the WSO is introducing a new concert series called Pop Nuit.
“I’m hoping that this new component sets the same precedent in quality that the rest of the festival is able to boast,” says Matt Schellenberg, Pop Nuit organizer and member of Royal Canoe.
The concert series will have two shows: Sarah Neufeld of the Arcade Fire with Jesse Krause, and Royal Canoe with Tasman Richardson. Richardson is a video artist who uses MIDI technology to trigger film clips, which Schellenberg describes as “like putting them in a drum machine.”
“It’s an odd thing, trying to be innovative within the pop genre since for the most part it’s a genre that celebrates being formulaic, but it’s a challenge we take seriously,” says Schellenberg.
The band will be performing Beck’s Song Reader – a new album released solely on sheet music.
“We were looking for something different than our regular set to perform for the festival. [ . . . ] There was some hesitation in not knowing what the material would be like, but he had released an article in the New Yorker giving freedom for anyone to interpret it however they’d like and we certainly have.”
Schellenberg and the WSO hope that Pop Nuit will not just be a grittier, after-hours component of the festival, but show that the New Music Festival is about showcasing music that is pushing boundaries, even if it comes from different genres – or in the case of Royal Canoe, sometimes defying genres. The hope is that younger fans will also be introduced to the WSO and the more classical works that make up the festival.
“Music is communication, and that’s why it really works at any level of intricacy, but classical music, perhaps along with jazz, is the most advanced vocabulary music has to offer,” says Schellenberg.
