Expect a weekend of bold new music when the 2025 Ottawa New Music Festival takes place from November 7 to 9. Presented by The Ottawa New Music Creators (ONMC), the three concerts offer a glimpse at the imagination and innovation that makes up the Canadian contemporary classical music scene.
The concerts offer intimate piano works, participatory performance art and community collaboration. Performances takes place at the Alma Duncan Salon of the Ottawa Art Gallery
Here’s a look at the lineup.
The 2025 Ottawa New Music Festival
Awake and Dreaming (November 7 at 7 p.m.)
Pianist Katherine Dowling performs Awake and Dreaming, a program of music for solo piano dedicated to acclaimed composer Alice Ping-Yee Ho. The concert represents three decades of her work, and offers a glimpse at the evolution of her style.
Chinese Canadian composer Alice Ping-Yee Ho is herself an accomplished pianist, and her compositions have earned multiple accolades and recognition, including the 2024 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, the 2022 Symphony Nova Scotia Maria Anna Mozart Award, and the 2022 Barlow Endowment Commissioning Award, among others. She is the recipient of the 2019 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize and the 2013 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Original Opera for The Lesson of Da Ji. Her music has been performed across Canada and internationally, including by the Finnish Lapland Chamber Orchestra, China National Symphony, Shanghai Philharmonic, Taiwan National Symphony, and Luxembourg Sinfonietta, among others.
A native of Saskatchewan, Katherine Dowling grew up in a musical family, and began piano lessons as a young child. In addition to performances, she is completing her Doctorate at Stony Brook University with Gilbert Kalish. Dowling spends her summers at Tanglewood as a multi-year fellow, and winters at the Banff Centre. Katherine is Assistant Professor of Classical Piano Performance at York University, having formerly served as Assistant Professor of Piano Performance at the University of Regina. She is also on faculty at The Phil and Eli Taylor Academy for Young Artists (Royal Conservatory of Music).
Quigital Corporate Retreat (November 8 at 7 p.m.)
Performance and participation come together as Quigital Corporate Retreat transforms the venue into an immersive corporate retreat where the audience members become active participants, complete with name tags and an interactive app. Their choices and interactions will directly influence the live performance by Architek Percussion, with vocalist Sarah Albu — the “retreat facilitators.” Expect a witty and thought provoking blend of music, improvisation, and digital interactivity in a playful critique of corporate culture.
Montréal-based quartet Architek Percussion were founded in 2012 by graduates of McGill University. They perform classic repertoire as well as new commissions (more than 60 so far) and premieres. They perform frequently in Montréal, and have collaborated with Codes d’Acces, Innovations en Concert, Le Vivier, Suoni per Il Popolo, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Pointe-a-Calliere Museum, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). Their performances have also taken them across Canada and beyond to France, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, USA, and the UK.
Sarah Albu is a soprano and experimental vocalist with a background that includes theatre, and an obsession with science fiction. She’s based in Montréal and Berlin. Sarah has performed as an invited artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the National Arts Centre of Canada, the Koumaria Residency in Greece, the Summertónar Festival in Tórshavn (Faroe Islands), and Finland’s Saari Residency, among many other international series and festivals across North America and Europe. Sarah has premiered many new works and contemporary opera roles.
Community Showcase (November 9 at 2:30 p.m.)
The festival closing Community Showcase features SHHH!! Ensemble, ONMC’s Artistic Directors, joined by Ottawa musicians and OrKidstra students in a performance of Jesse Stewart’s In Sea, along with the world premiere of a new work for two violins by emerging composer-in-residence Shanti Sivarulrasa, a violin sonata by Dinuk Wijeratne, and piano-percussion duos by Vincent Ho and Jocelyn Morlock performed by SHHH!! Ensemble.
SHHH!! Ensemble is percussionist Zac Pulak and pianist Edana Higham. The duo formed in 2017, and began developing their signature style at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Canadian Music Centre. They have commissioned and premiered works by Kelly-Marie Murphy, John Beckwith, Harry Stafylakis, Jocelyn Morlock, and Monica Pearce, among many others.
Ottawa native Shanti Sivarulrasa is a composer and violinist now based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). She is in her fourth year of the Bachelor of Music program at Dalhousie University on a four-year Fountain Performing Arts Scholarship, with a concentration in composition. She made her professional solo debut in 2025 as a violinist with Symphony Nova Scotia performing her own composition Chrysalis for solo violin and orchestra as part of the Open Waters Festival.
- Find tickets and full program details [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto City Editor at Ludwig Van. Previously, she was a freelance writer with a specialty in culture and travel for three decades, and a creative writing instructor for Ontariolearn.
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