Arts & Culture

The Agassiz Chamber Music Festival presents an outpouring of artistry as superb local and international players come together to collaborate on great chamber music. 

One of this year’s return performers is violist David Harding, who has been no stranger to the festival over the years.  

“I think I did the first festival in 2000,” says Harding, who returns to town for the first time in the post-pandemic years.  

The Agassiz Chamber Music Festival features brilliant local and renowned international musicians in a weeklong celebration of music-making.  

This year, they welcome the award-winning Swiss Piano Trio as one of the distinguished special guests.  

Since 2010 Winnipeg’s Cluster festival has been engaging, and entertaining Winnipegger's in thoughtful and ground-breaking presentations of integrated arts that make use of dance, sound exploration, art and video all fused together.  

Featuring artists of today’s generation, the festival, which happens at a variety of venues around Winnipeg, displays the new vistas that artists are exploring, all the while encouraging audience members to think, live and feel their surroundings. 

On Sunday evening, the Agassiz Chamber Music Festival kicked off their 2024 offering. 

Dubbed “Sounds in the Key of Spring,” the festival features a plethora of local and international players, exploring a wide array of chamber music in its various guises, combinations and permutations. 

On June 4th and 5th the Manitobans for the Arts will be holding their Annual General Gathering. Called New Voices-Fresh Thinking, the event will feature two days of learning and conversation on how artists can engage, sustain and strengthen the arts sector. 

This gathering will feature a keynote address by renowned, award –winning cultural strategist Patricia Huntsman. Huntsman has worked across Canada and internationally in senior roles in the creative industry for 25 years. 

Starting this Saturday, June 1 and going until September 8th, the Wag-Qaumajuq is presenting a fabulous new exhibit, that showcases the work of one of the most historical and influential painters in Canadian History.

Bust out your tie-dye, put a flower in your hair and boogie on down to Lutheran Church of the Cross to get groovin’ with the Winnipeg Pops Orchestra and their very special guests – the Very Groovy Things!  

Performing hits of the Mamas and the Papas, plus other tunes from the 60’s, 70’s and beyond, this collaboration marks the first orchestral gig for the Very Groovy Things (VGT). 

A weeklong celebration of sound, songs and stories is set to take place as the Agassiz Chamber Music Festival runs from June 2nd through 8th.  

“Sounds in the Key of Spring” is this year’s theme and will treat audiences to more than a dozen recitals, concerts and events, featuring some of the most brilliant contemporary musicians performing today.  

“In the end, love of music is what sustains the arts,” says artistic director Paul Marleyn on the festival’s long history.  

Vienna-based, Canadian-born Sarah McElravy is an internationally renowned string player. 

Equally adept on violin and viola, she is a career chamber musician, recitalist and pedagogue who has performed as soloist with major orchestras across the globe – the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic and more. 

In her provincial debut, McElravy returns to Canadian turf to close out the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra’s 2023/24 season.