Conveniently located next to St. Andrew’s subway station. Use main doors on King St. Opposite Roy Thomson Hall in the Entertainment District.
Advance Tickets: $35 General | $30 Seniors | $15 Students
At the Door: $40 | $35 | $20
Subscription: $150 Members | $180 Non-members | $85 Students | $75 Student Members

Advance Tickets available through Eventbrite at above link. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase unless the event is cancelled. In that case, a refund will be issued within 60 days.

Widely acclaimed for the rare beauty of her sound and her enchanting presence on stage, Irina Kulikova has established herself as one of today’s leading guitarists. She tours far afield, with appearances at major festivals in Europe, North America and Asia and in concert halls such as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, the Palau de la Musica in Valencia, the Musashino Hall in Tokyo and the Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai.

Irina Kulikova started playing guitar and piano at five. The daughter of a cellist and distinguished pedagogue, she was educated in the Russian tradition of classical music. At eight she gave her first public performances. By the time she was twelve, she was a child star playing all across Russia and at festivals in Europe. At seventeen, Irina Kulikova moved to Moscow to continue her studies at the Gnessins Academy. Later she graduated with distinction at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and the Conservatoire of Maastricht in The Netherlands.

Performing with outstanding violinists, cellists and pianists, she developed her passion for chamber music. She joined the ‘Salzburger Solisten’ and ensemble-chef Luz Leskowitz with his Stradivarius for numerous concerts in Austria and Germany: “Wherever she performs, she plays herself into the hearts of her audience.” She played for various members of the royal and aristocratic families of Germany and Denmark.

Irina Kulikova received over 30 awards for her artistry, including 1st prizes at the highly prestigious competitions of Michele Pittaluga in Italy, Guitarra Alhambra in Spain, Forum Gitarre Wien in Austria and Iserlohn in Germany. She recorded six albums, five of which in cooperation with Grammy-Award winning producer Norbert Kraft. “Some of the most sheerly beautiful playing I have ever heard”, Soundboard Magazine reviewed.

The beauty of Ms Kulikova’s playing has become iconic for guitarists around the world. She is a much appreciated mentor for conservatorium students and fellow professionals and shares her profound understanding of music in master classes brimming with imagery and humour. She is founder and director of the online ClassicalGuitar.Academy and of the The Hague – Altamira Guitar Competition. Her personal motto, in life and music: It’s about the touch.

Irina Kulikova plays Simon Marty guitars (spruce top, cedar top) with Savarez strings.

www.irinakulikova.com

Conveniently located next to St. Andrew’s subway station. Use main doors on King St. Opposite Roy Thomson Hall in the Entertainment District.
Advance Tickets: $35 General | $30 Seniors | $15 Students
At the Door: $40 | $35 | $20

Advance Tickets available through Eventbrite at above link. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase unless the event is cancelled. In that case, a refund will be issued within 60 days.

Anna Pietrzak is a versatile guitarist, pedagogue, recording artist, and adjudicator.  She is artistic director of the GITAROMANIA Festival in Poland, and founder of the Vancouver Guitar Orchestra.

Anna is a laureate of over a dozen guitar competitions in Europe.  She has performed as a soloist as well as with chamber music ensembles and orchestras throughout Europe, Asia and North America.  In 2017 she made her Canadian debut with the Toronto Concert Orchestra under the baton of Kerry Stratton.

Anna received her PhD degree from the Academy of Music in Wroclaw, Poland where she studied with professors Piotr Zaleski and Marek Zieliński.  She completed her graduate degree at the Conservatory of Music in Piraeus in Greece in the guitar program of Costas Cotsiolis. She perfected her skills in master classes held by renowned guitarists including Aniello Desiderio, Joaquin Clerch, Carlo Domeniconi, Pavel Steidl, Ivo and Sofia Kaltchev and Peter & Zoltan Katona.

 She has released three albums which received positive reviews from the press; ‘La Catedral – 20th Century Guitar Music’, the crossover ‘GITANA Electric – Eclectic’ and ‘Farewell’ where she performs in a duo with her brother Łukasz Pietrzak.

Anna Pietrzak teaches students of all ages, from primary school to university level and beyond. Thanks to her vast experience her students are laureates of national and international guitar competitions. Until 2019 she was a guitar lecturer and chamber music teacher at the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music and the Ryszard Bukowski Secondary Music School in Wrocław, Poland.  She also worked as a guitar teacher at the Fryderyk Chopin Primary Music School in Oleśnica from 2000 to 2019.  Currently she teaches at the British Columbia Conservatory of Music in Vancouver, Canada.

www.annapietrzak.com

Alan (XuKun) Liu, born in December 2001, is the 4^th prize winner of the prestigious 2021 Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition.

Liu received his first national prize in Beijing in 2009.  At 12, he won 1^st prize in the GFA International Youth Competition Junior Division and Guitar Montreal International Youth Competition (2014).  He won his first adult competition at the Northwest Guitar Festival, placed 2^nd in the Parkening International Youth Guitar Competition, and debuted in the Vancouver Orpheum at the age of 13 (2015).  In 2016, Liu placed 2^nd at the GFA International Youth Competition Senior Division and 1^st in the Canadian National Music Festival (FMCF). In addition to being the youngest guitar winner at FMCF, he is also one of the youngest Grand Award prize winners. Liu has collected additional awards in North America, Europe, and Asia, including recent 1^st prizes in the Mercatali Gorizia International, Houston International, and Philadelphia Classical Guitar Competitions (2021).

Featured as the first classical guitarist in CBC’s “30 Hot Classical Musicians Under 30” (2016), Liu regularly performs solo and chamber music in Canada, the USA, and China.  He has also played with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Prince George Symphony Orchestra.

Liu is studying with David Starobin and Jason Vieaux at the Curtis Institute of Music.  He works periodically with Daniel Bolshoy, Rene Izquierdo, Michael Partington and Jonathan Leathwood.  Liu’s first two teachers were Ping Jin and Xia Yang. Additionally, he has participated in numerous masterclasses.

Liu performs on a 2018 Martin Blackwell double-top. He is an Altamira Artist.

In the past 18-months, musicians, like you, have experienced the greatest upheaval in recent history. Ironically, communities around the world turned to music during periods of isolation and lockdown. From spontaneous balcony duets to YouTube parodies, making music provided a means to regain control. As musicians, you know first hand the power of music.

Almost all aspects of life have been impacted by COVID-19, with society struggling to find a “new normal” alongside feelings of anxiety and stress. So many of the modalities typically used for managing the way we feel in times like these are time consuming and difficult to make a habit.

As a practitioner in the field of health for 30-years and a musician for just as long, I’ve learned the power of music in transforming mood quickly, effortlessly and cost effectively. Now, more than ever, the potency of music can help our society reduce stress and build resilience.

In this interactive session, you’ll learn about the transformational effects of music and be able to share how it:

• Shifts mood, almost immediately, based on scientific evidence

• Increases productivity, focus and enjoyment

• Can be done anywhere at any time

Karen Agro is a pharmaceutical industry consultant, community pharmacist, keynote speaker and corporate workshop facilitator.   Alongside her Agro Health Associates consulting business, she blends her extensive background in healthcare, with her lifelong passion for music, to fulfill her mission to help individuals and corporate teams – who feel stressed and burned out – shift their mood in under 10-minutes.

Music Performance Anxiety (MPA), otherwise known as stage fright, affects nearly all musicians in some way or another, and it often leads many musicians to abandon music or use maladaptive coping mechanisms to deal with their symptoms.

In this workshop, we will learn strategies from cognitive-behavioural psychology, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and sports psychology to help us manage our experience of stage fright as it appears in the body and mind, and develop new patterns of behaviour that will improve our experience of music-making while also improving the quality of our musical presentations on the guitar. There will be interactive exercises and audience participation.

Daniel Ramjattan is a versatile and accomplished classical guitarist, teacher, and performance anxiety coach based in Toronto. He teaches at Wilfrid Laurier University and privately online. He helps guitarists of all ages and skill levels to break through their barriers to successful performance through scientific methods informed by wisdom and experience.

Past performances have taken him to Austria, Italy, and various locations across Canada, the United States, and Japan.  Daniel has received awards for his playing on the provincial, national, and international levels, and has received lessons and masterclasses from world-renowned guitarists including Denis Azabagic, Jorge Caballero, Pavel Steidl, Sergio Assad, Pepe Romero, Fabio Zanon, Remi Boucher, and Jerome Ducharme.  He also studied with Lorenzo Micheli in Austria and Italy in Summer 2017.
      

Daniel holds a Master’s degree and a Bachelor of Music Degree in classical guitar performance from the University of Ottawa, where he studied with the renowned composer-performer Patrick Roux. He also studied with Bruce Holzman in Florida.  He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree at the University of Toronto with Dr. Jeffrey McFadden

Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is the guitarist that goes beyond the classical. Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy-winning album for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, Play.

Vieaux has earned a reputation for putting his expressiveness and virtuosity at the service of a remarkably wide range of music. His solo recitals have been a feature at every major guitar series in North America and important guitar festivals in Asia, Australia, Europe, and Mexico. Jason Vieaux has performed as concerto soloist with over 100 orchestras, including Cleveland, Toronto, Houston, Nashville, San Diego, Buffalo, Auckland Philharmonia, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s.  

Performance highlights include the Caramoor Festival as Artist-in-Residence, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, New York’s 92Y, Ravinia Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Curtis Presents, and performances at the Phillips Collection, the National Gallery of Art, Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, and Shanghai Concert Hall.   Vieaux recently returned to San Francisco Performances for a solo recital in the Herbst Theatre and to the Ellnora Guitar Festival.  He performed at Wolf Trap with the Escher Quartet, and gave concerto performances with the New Mexico Symphony, New West Symphony, Bakersfield Symphony, and Kentucky Symphony. In a return to live performing in the fall of 2020, the Fort Worth Symphony re-engaged Jason Vieaux for four performances of Rodrigo’s Concerto de Aranjuez.

Jason has forged his reputation as a first-rate chamber musician and programmer through performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bard Music Festival, Music@Menlo, San Francisco Performances, Cleveland Chamber Music Society and many others. Chamber music collaborators include the Escher String Quartet; Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; violinists Nigel Armstrong, Anne Akiko Meyers, Kristin Lee, and Tessa Lark; acclaimed harpist Yolanda Kondonassis; and accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro.

Vieaux’s passion for new music has fostered premieres of works by Jonathan Leshnoff, Avner Dorman, Dan Visconti, Vivian Fung and many more.   In 2021, Jason Vieaux premiered and recorded “Four Points of Light” composed for him by jazz legend Pat Metheny for his new album Road To The Sun (Modern Records). Jason’s premiere recording of Jonathan Leshnoff’s Guitar Concerto with the Nashville Symphony (Naxos) was released in 2019. Previous albums include Jeff Beal’s “Six Sixteen” Guitar Concerto with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (BIS); Infusion (Azica), a collaboration with bandoneonist Julien Labro; Ginastera’s Guitar Sonata, featured on Ginastera: One Hundred (Oberlin Music); and Together (Azica), a duo album with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis.

Jason Vieaux has an upcoming solo recording of Bach on Azica Records; his latest, Dance (Azica) with the Escher Quartet, includes works by Boccherini, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Aaron Jay Kernis. 

About Jason Vieaux’s album Play: “If you ever want to give a friend a disc that will cement his or her love for the guitar, this is a perfect candidate.” – Soundboard Magazine

www.jasonvieaux.com

Conveniently located next to St. Andrew’s subway station. Use main doors on King St. Opposite Roy Thomson Hall in the Entertainment District.
Advance Tickets: $35 General | $30 Seniors | $15 Students
Subscription: $150 Members | $180 Non-members | $85 Students | $75 Student Members

Advance Tickets available through Eventbrite at above link. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase unless the event is cancelled. In that case, a refund will be issued within 60 days.

Please note that COVID Public Health Measures from the Ontario government require:
Proof of full vaccination from all concert attendees.  
Masking and physical distancing.  
Concert Tickets must be purchased in advance – tickets will not be sold at the door until further notice.

Plucking music from a wide variety of sources, the HK Guitar Duo performs works never before heard on the guitar. From symphonies by Beethoven and Mozart, to piano works by Ravel and Schubert, the duo effectively adapts these works while infusing them with the inherent beauty of the guitar.

Drew Henderson and Michael Kolk met at the University of Toronto in 2004 and have since established themselves as one of North America’s premier classical guitar duos. They have released three albums to date which have received airplay on CBC Radio 2 and The New Classical 96.3 in Canada, as well as the Classical Guitar Alive! radio programme broadcast throughout the U.S.

Receiving numerous glowing reviews, their second album “Henderson Kolk duo play Bach, Ravel, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Lhoyer” was featured on Classical Guitar Alive! as a Best New Release. Their third and latest album, “HK Duo Plays Mozart” pushes the boundaries of what is possible on the classical guitar. This album features an 8-string guitar in their arrangement of Mozart’s 40th Symphony, along with arrangements of a piano sonata and a duo originally for violin and viola.

Drew and Michael are in high demand as concert artists, having completed two tours of central Canada as Prairie Debut artists, along with recent concerts in Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver, Sarasota, Gatineau, and Muskoka, among others. They have also performed at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America Convention in Columbus, GA, and the Mediterranean Guitar Festival in Cervo, Italy. Selected arrangements have been published and are available through Les Productions d’Oz. 

www.hkguitarduo.com

Conveniently located next to St. Andrew’s subway station. Use main doors on King St. Opposite Roy Thomson Hall in the Entertainment District.
Advance Tickets: $35 General | $30 Seniors | $15 Students
Subscription: $150 Members | $180 Non-members | $85 Students | $75 Student Members

Advance Tickets available through Eventbrite at above link. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase unless the event is cancelled. In that case, a refund will be issued within 60 days.

Please note that COVID Public Health Measures from the Ontario government require:
Proof of full vaccination from all concert attendees.  
Masking and physical distancing.  
Concert Tickets must be purchased in advance – tickets will not be sold at the door until further notice.

Whether the work of groundbreaking contemporary composers or elegant instrumental music rarely heard on guitars, Canadian ensemble ChromaDuo is commissioning, arranging, and performing some of today’s most enchanting music.

“These are uncommonly beautiful works, highly inventive and personal,” says Kenneth Keaton (American Record Guide). “ChromaDuo…is simply exquisite. Their sounds are perfectly balanced, yet individual, and each has a ravishing tone with lots of range. Ensemble is perfection, even in the freest passages; and their interpretations of these pieces are convincing, even compelling. This is some of the most purely beautiful playing I’ve heard in a while.” Germany’s Fidelity agrees: “The playing of ChromaDuo is extremely subtle and sophisticated, the communication nothing less than perfect.”

Their first recording, Hidden Waters (Naxos 2012), features five world-premieres by Roland Dyens, Stephen Goss, and Christopher William Pierce. Garrett Schumann of Sequenza21 called it, “one giant, convivial, through-composed exploration of the guitar’s expressive range… [T]he restraint of the performance makes you want to lean in closer to hear the expression on every note.” The CD is also recommended in Enrique Robichaud’s book, The Guitar’s TOP 100.

In September 2016, Naxos released their second album, the music of French Impressionist masters Debussy and Ravel, prompting Classical Guitar to call it “a revelation, and a superior achievement.” Minor7th’s reviewers called it “genius,” and noted, “Smith and MacDonald deliver these compositions with such resonance, sustain, and delicacy that their exchanges seem almost symbiotic, and profoundly moving as if the instruments were corporeal rather than of wood, nylon and brass.”

In demand as performers and pedagogues, ChromaDuo has performed in England, Mexico, across Canada and throughout the USA. 

www.chromaduo.com