The VICO celebrates a decade of creating and performing ground-breaking new Canadian music this fall, with a multifaceted concert series called “City Full of Sound: the Music of Intercultural Vancouver” that features world premieres by composers Edward Henderson, Rita Ueda and Jin Zhang, with special guests Orchestra Armonia and Laudate Singers.

Intercultural Vancouver in Music & Pictures
Tuesday October 11, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Roundhouse Community Centre (181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver)
FREE Admission

An informal lecture-performance event featuring VICO musicians, illustrating – via short works for solo, duo, and trio – some of the musical traditions that make up Vancouver's cultural fabric. The presentation includes an overview of the history of intercultural music in Vancouver, and a photo exhibit celebrating BC’s pioneering inter- and multi-cultural composers in classical music.

Classical Meets Intercultural: VICO and Orchestra Armonia
Sunday October 16, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Ryerson United Church (2195 West 45th Ave., Vancouver)
Tickets ($25/$15) available here 
 
A co-production with Orchestra Armonia and artistic director John van Deursen, this performance sees VICO musicians joining the 13- member string ensemble for a programme of classical music with an intercultural slant.

Orchestral Evolution: Gala 10th Anniversary Concert
With special guests Laudate Singers
Saturday November 12, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Norman Rothstein Theatre (950 West 41st Ave., Vancouver)
Tickets ($18/$28) available here

This concert features the full 24-member VICO plus choir (50 musicians in total), and focuses on large-scale works, including a new arrangement of Elliot Weisgarber's Yamato no Haru by Mark Armanini, Dreams of the Wanderer by Moshe Denburg, and the world premieres of major new pieces by Jin Zhang, Edward Henderson and Rita Ueda.

“City Full of Sound”, produced in partnership with the City of Vancouver as a celebration of both the VICO’s 10th anniversary and the city’s 125th, is designed to showcase Vancouver (past and present) as a city of wonderful diversity, a place that is uniquely equipped to foster adventurous cross-cultural collaborations. Only in such a city – one built of immigrant communities who not only tolerate but celebrate each other's differences, one that is home to a world music scene internationally renowned for its diversity, possessing a deep pool of talent and artistic innovation – could an ensemble like the VICO, Canada's first and only professional intercultural orchestra, have grown and thrived for ten years and counting.  The various events of “City Full of Sound” will be a fitting celebration of that spirit.

“City Full of Sound” is presented by the VICO with support from the City of Vancouver's 125th Anniversary Grants Program.