The Scotia Festival of Music has announced that it will host twenty concerts at the Peggy Corkum Music Room in Halifax as part of its 2024-2025 Chamber Players series.
This season, we have an amazing cross-section of classical music in Canada and beyond. – Simon Docking
“This season, we have an amazing cross-section of classical music in Canada and beyond,” says managing and artistic director Simon Docking in a media release.
The season will kick off in September with the Penderecki String Quartet, performing classics by Haydn and Prokofiev and Canadian works by Carmen Braden and R. Murray Schafer. “This is a group that often plays in large halls; to see them up close and personal in the Music Room will be a revelation,” says Docking.
The season also includes 18-year-old violinist Justin Saulnier, who recently won the Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition and Canadian pianist Heather Taves, who this year has been studying and performing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and will bring five of them for a Chamber Players recital in November. “Heather’s Beethoven Journey blog is fantastic reading and highly recommended whether or not you can come to her concert,” says Docking.
Other highlights are the cello duo VC2 from Toronto, soprano Meghan Lindsay from Ottawa, cellist Blair Lofgren and several concerts featuring the superb musicians of Symphony Nova Scotia.
The season concludes with a “mini-festival” of the complete Chopin Nocturnes in April 2025, with seven Nova Scotia pianists playing over the two evenings. At these concerts, audiences will also receive a custom-designed cocktail by Keegan McGregor, mixologist at The Highwayman in Halifax, who won the title of Canada’s Best Bartender 2024. “Keegan has a music background and is going to come up with a cocktail and mocktail inspired by Chopin for our audience to enjoy,” says Docking. “This will be a lovely event: two evenings of beautiful and meditative listening, with a unique cocktail to enjoy with the show.”
Full program details and tickets are available at scotiafestival.com.