Arts & Culture

Things are about to heat up for one Winnipeg-based theatre company. 

Winnipeg's Dry Cold Productions marks their 20th anniversary with A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder — a hilariously grim belated celebration!

Tomorrow June 14th, and this Thursday, June 16th at 7:30pm the Winnipeg Chamber Music Society (WCMS) returns to the concert stage with their annual mini-chamber music festival that they are calling “Mozart and More.” Both concerts take place at the Muriel Richardson Auditorium at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and will feature chamber music of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, and Khachaturian.

As the name implies, Nuovoce (a fusion of the Italian words: nuovo, meaning ‘new’, and voce, meaning ‘voice’) Chamber Choir is one of the city’s newest additions to the glorious array of voices that make up the province’s vibrant choral community. 

Founded in spring 2019 by Justin Odwak and Sarah Sommer, the ensemble provides an opportunity for young choristers to continue singing after high school. 

Since first performing in the city as a 16-year-old, Dutch recorder player Lucie Horsch has gone on to become one of the most celebrated virtuosi on her instrument. Now, six years later, the sparkling and stylish player returns to town, once again performing alongside Anne Manson and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. 

Though one would be hard-pressed not to be wowed by Horsch’s playing, it is the instrument itself that comes with a bit of emotional baggage.

“I think there’s positive sides and negative sides to this image of the recorder,” says Horsch. 

From rarely programmed pieces to celebrated masterworks, the 2022 Agassiz Festival’s theme is “Where Worlds Converge” and the featured guest performers this year are no strangers to genre and century hopping. 

Borrowing virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim’s life motto as its title, the second evening concert at the Agassiz Chamber Music Festival features all three of Brahms’ violin sonatas — music written with his close friend and near lifelong collaborator in mind. 

Named for the vast and ancient glacial lake that used to cover most of this part of the continent, the Agassiz Festival returns to bathe concertgoers in a weeklong celebration of chamber music from Sunday through next Saturday. 

It’s the last month of the school year, summer is just around the corner and with it, hopefully will come some long, warm and dry summer days and nights. 

On the first Friday of the month, Chris Hall of McNally Robinson Booksellers returned to the airwaves in the longstanding segment called "What to Read."

Winnipeg’s Pride Week is in full swing here in town and on Saturday, June 4, it will be in full sing with Rainbow Harmony Project (RHP). 

Singing out since 1999, the choir for the LGBTQ2* community and their allies present their first spring concert in three years. 

“There’s a feeling of hope,” says RHP board president Karyn Kumhyr, who also sings in the tenor section of the choir.  

After a season of smaller concerts and musical outreach, to be a part of the more than 45 community events associated with Pride is an exciting opportunity, she says.