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SOUNDSTREAMS ANNOUNCES 2025/26 TD ENCOUNTERS PROGRAM

Free concerts throughout the season featuring works by Andrew Balfour, Omar Daniel, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, Maria-Eduarda Mendes Martins, Olivier Messiaen, Arvo Pärt, Corie Rose Soumah, Kotoka Suzuki & Anthony Tan

October 1, 2025 (TORONTO, ON): Lawrence Cherney, Founding Artistic Director of Soundstreams, has announced the company’s free, four-concert TD Encounters program for the season ahead. This annual series features expert musical performances and timely discussion, in an intimate and relaxed setting.

“Encounters is truly a voyage of discovery, an unparalleled opportunity to engage with both the mystery and the joy of the creative process,” says Cherney. “Not only are audiences invited to discover fresh, new works inspired by a spectrum of themes, but they’re offered a rare chance to engage directly with the artists that created and performed those works in an intimate setting. Encounters is a chance to gather in-person as a community, with curiosity and a spirit of adventure, and be completely absorbed by music that reflects the beauty and complexity of our city, our country, and our world.”

This season the entire TD Encounters series takes place at Hugh’s Room, 296 Broadview Avenue, Toronto. Visit Soundstreams.ca for more details.

2025/26 SOUNDSTREAMS TD ENCOUNTERS PROGRAM

Empire Étrange: The Death of Louis Riel
October 28, 2025 | 7:30 p.m.
Registration link here.

The story of Métis leader Louis Riel is dramatic, even astounding. The tragedy and controversy surrounding his life sink deep into Canadian identity and the echoes of his legacy are still being felt 140 years after his execution. Inspired by Riel’s story, Andrew Balfour, prominent Winnipeg composer of Cree descent, wrote Empire Étrange: The Death of Louis Riel, an oratorio that first premiered in Winnipeg in 2013. This Encounters event features the premiere of a newly reimagined version of Empire Étrange, arranged for 12-voice chorus, piano, violin, cello, and percussion, and conducted by Balfour himself. Following the performance, the composer will join for a discussion and audience Q&A.

For the Birds
November 12, 2025 | 7:30 p.m.
Registration link here.

Birdsong is the often-unnoticed soundtrack of our daily lives. More than just background sound, birdsong has long been a source of artistic inspiration: it holds deep cultural meaning and crucially, is recognized as a key indicator of environmental health.
This Encounters event explores the significance of birdsong through music, featuring renowned pianist Louise Bessette, one of the foremost interpreters of seminal 20th century French composer Olivier Messiaen. She will perform two works from his Catalogue d’Oiseaux (L’alouette Lulu and L’alouette Calandrelle) alongside world premieres of two new Soundstreams commissioned works, composed by Kalaisan Kalaichelvan and Maria-Eduarda Mendes Martins, each written in response to one of the Messiaen works being performed. Musical performances will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A with Michael Mesure (Executive Director of FLAP Canada), Bessette, Mendes Martins and Kalaichelvan. 

This Encounters event is a companion event to Soundstreams’ first mainstage concert of the season, on November 22, Mass for the Endangered. Find out more here.
This TD Encounters is presented in association with FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program) Canada, a leading Canadian charity and recognized authority on bird-building collisions. Their work is dedicated to preserving bird ecosystems and protecting birdsong by keeping birds safe from deadly collisions in our built environment.

Transoceanic
January 19, 2026 | 7:30 p.m.
Curated by Haotian Yu,* Transoceanic traces intersections between technology and diasporic experience. In this Encounters, works from diasporic composers Corie Rose Soumah, Kotoka Suzuki, and Anthony Tan reimagine sound and light through science-fiction visions that decenter Eurocentric narratives of progress.

Cultural perceptions continue to position world artists as preservers of tradition, and artists of the Global North as the source of innovation. Diasporic artists, entangled with the global flow of technology and resources, challenge this divide. Like technology, diaspora is both geographically fluid and regional – flowing everywhere, yet still carrying the culturally specific traces of places it has lived.
Soumah’s Limpidités VI layers saxophones, cowrie shells, and electronics into a sonic archaeology of the Black Atlantic. Tan’s Horizontal and Vertical Forces reimagines virtuosity through complex electronic sound, pushing listening itself into overdrive and reappropriating labour and excess as stereotypes of the Asian performing body. Suzuki’s Delicate Anticipation repurposes electric lighting to cast delicate silhouettes, drawing on Japanese aesthetics of shadow to question Western ideals of dominating light and progress.

A discussion and audience Q&A with Yu will follow the performance.
*Haotian Yu is the winner of the 2025/26 Soundstreams New Voices Curator Mentorship Program for the Encounters Series.

Arvo Pärt at 90: Heritage in Song
February 9, 2026 | 7:30 p.m.

Arvo Pärt is the second most performed classical composer in the world, edged out only by John Williams. In celebration of his 90th birthday, this Encounters event highlights both his global impact and his Estonian roots, with his iconic work Fratres for violin and piano representing his presence on the global scene, contrasted by the folk-inspired Es sang vor langen Jahren for soprano, violin, and viola. These works will be paired with the world premiere public performance of Estonian-Canadian composer Omar Daniel’s Runo Songs, adaptations of traditional Estonian folk melodies for violin and soprano. 

The evening will feature Erika Raum (violin), Oskar Daniel-Raum (piano), and Xin Wang (soprano). Following musical performances, composer Omar Daniel will join the performers for a panel discussion and audience Q&A.
This Encounters event is a companion event to Soundstreams’ February 14th mainstage concert, The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir: Arvo Pärt at 90. Find out more here.

To learn more about Soundstreams TD Encounters:

https://soundstreams.ca/upcoming-events/encounters

To learn more about the Soundstreams 2025/26 Season: Soundstreams.ca. 

Soundstreams gratefully acknowledges our public and private supporters:
Canadian Heritage, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, TD Ready Commitment, Raymond James Wealth Management, The Michael and Sonja Koerner Charitable Foundation, The Azrieli Foundation, The Mary-Margaret Webb Foundation, SOCAN Foundation, Raymond James Canada Foundation, Epstein Family Trust, the Anne-Marie H. Applin Foundation, the Martin Bhadra Charitable Gift Fund, and Soundstreams’ generous individual donors. 

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About Soundstreams 

Under the leadership of its Founding Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney, Soundstreams began in 1982 with a tribute to Igor Stravinsky’s 100th birth year, an artist who fundamentally transformed the ways we hear our world. In the intervening years, we’ve probed compelling Canadian themes and stories through new works in music and opera that resonate with our time and place. We aim not only to reflect upon those themes and stories but to inspire new perspectives and approaches to them. 

Soundstreams has created a platform for compelling new creations both at home and abroad. Our various Toronto-based concert series, educational and outreach events and professional development programs have showcased nearly 1500 global creators and performers in collaboration with their Canadian counterparts. At the same time, Soundstreams’ productions have toured North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe. In recent seasons, Soundstreams has received high praise from the international press: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

-30-Media Contact: Katie Saunoris, Publicist (KSPR) | [email protected] | Media Gallery