Saturday, March 31 at 8:00 pm

Norman Rothstein Theatre (950 West 41st Ave., Vancouver)

Tickets ($28/$18) & information: http://www.vi-co.org

The Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra brings its 10th anniversary season to a triumphant close with a concert featuring the 25-member ensemble and chamber choir Laudate Singers, premiering major new works commissioned by the VICO from Dutch composer Joël Bons and renowned Canadian composer Dr. Stephen Chatman. The programme will also include a new Canada Council commission by Coat Cooke for intercultural orchestra, and Moshe Denburg’s El Ginat Egoz for choir, erhu, zheng and marimba.

Bons, Chatman and Cooke have worked closely with the VICO to create their new pieces, in a ground-breaking commissioning and development project funded by Arts Partners in Creative Development. “Inter-cultural music-making involves combining instruments, musical traditions, techniques and aesthetics from all over the world into a cohesive, artistically effective whole,” says the VICO’s founding Artistic Director Moshe Denburg. “We are one of the only ensembles in the world doing this work on an orchestral scale. Thus, our work is not only to commission and perform new repertoire but also to develop the techniques necessary to perform that repertoire.” Over the past several years, the orchestra has evolved an innovative, interactive workshop format, through which musicians, singers, conductors and composers work together to address artistic and logistical challenges, and “test drive” new ideas.

The result is fusion music on a grand scale… from Bons’ contemporary/experimental work for intercultural orchestra and Cooke’s combination of improvisational techniques with written composition (both of which will feature Bic Hoang on danbau, a Vietnamese string instrument), to Chatman’s new setting of The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam, which includes Persian, Chinese and Western elements, and requires the choir to sing a gamut of styles from traditional classical chorales to ragtime. With Imagined Worlds: Intertwined, the VICO presents an ensemble of 50 musicians, performing a programme of intercultural music that truly reflects the diversity, virtuosity and global scope of the artistic community in which it was created.