Soundstreams Unveils 2025/26 Season Featuring Quatuor Bozzini, Steven Dann and More

Soundstreams has revealed the company's 43rd season, opening this November with Sarah Kirkland Snider's poignant choral work Mass for the Endangered. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir will return in February, following 2024's sold-out show, to celebrate Arvo Pärt's 90th birthday. Montreal's celebrated Quatuor Bozzini will play a series of world premieres; while the Love Songs program for seven singers, piano and percussion will explore works of love, identity, connection, and censorship. Anna Pidgorna - winner of the Soundstreams New Voices Curator Mentorship Program - will close the season with a powerful meditation on war, loss, and resilience, themes that run throughout the five-show season.

"Since founding Soundstreams in 1982, we've told compelling Canadian stories that resonate deeply with our time and place," says Cherney. "As storytellers, we alone can't bring stability to a fractured world. But through stories we can bring reflection upon, and context to, our world.

Two programs next season speak to some of the great social justice issues of our time. Mass for the Endangered, an ode to the impact of humanity on the natural world, is universal in its exploration of how we must reimagine our relationship to the Earth. In Terra Pax (On Earth, Peace) is a meditation on war and peace in a world that is increasingly turning to aggression. These Soundstreams programs speak eloquently to our capacity for change, and for finding hope in the midst of all.

Two other programs explore relationships: those with other humans; and spiritual relationships. In what will surely be one of the great choral events of the decade, the legendary Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir celebrates Arvo Pärt's 90th birthday in a program of spiritual masterpieces. Our Love Songs program takes a lighthearted, but nevertheless, profound look at our love for each other, even touching on how technology has influenced the ways we express that love."

Throughout the season, audiences will find a mix of world premieres by Canadian and international composers, both established and emerging. With Strings Attached: Quatuor Bozzini has both: world premieres by Zosha Di Castri, Taylor Brook, and Cassandra Miller, and six short new string quartets by participants in the Soundstreams Bridges Emerging Composers Program. Free concerts through the Soundstreams TD Encounters will also continue next season, with more details to be announced.

2025/26 subscriptions are on sale now.

For more information, visit Soundstreams.ca.

MASS FOR THE ENDANGERED

November 22, 2025, 7:30 p.m.
Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity-St. Paul's Centre
Featuring David Fallis, Conductor, Soundstreams Choir 21, and Ensemble Soundstreams

Hailed by National Public Radio as "one of today's most compelling composers for the human voice," Sarah Kirkland Snider's Mass for the Endangered is a poignant choral meditation on the fragility of our natural world. Blending Nathaniel Bellows' evocative poetry with the traditional Latin Mass, this work is a plea for compassion and stewardship in the face of environmental crisis. Also presented alongside this work is Andrew Balfour's Gaze Upon the Trees, and R. Murray Schafer's virtuosic Wild Bird for violin and harp. Soundstreams' opening concert is a deeply moving reflection on our responsibility, relationship and connectivity to the planet and its creatures.

ESTONIAN PHILHARMONIC CHAMBER CHOIR: ARVO PÄRT AT 90

February 14, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Yorkminster Park Baptist Church
Tõnu Kaljuste, Artistic Director
Destined to be one of the great choral events of the decade, the world-renowned Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (EPCC), led by esteemed founder and conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, returns to Toronto for a tribute to Arvo Pärt's 90th birthday. A favourite of Toronto audiences, the EPCC has captivated listeners under Soundstreams' auspices since 2000, with concerts that regularly sell out. Don't miss this rare opportunity to experience their luminous sound in the acoustic splendor of Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. The program features some of Pärt's most celebrated works, alongside works by Philip Glass, Luciano Berio, and others. It also includes the world premiere of a new Soundstreams commission by Estonian-Canadian composer Riho Esko Maimets.

WITH STRINGS ATTACHED: QUATUOR BOZZINI IN THREE PREMIERES

March 21, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Jane Mallett Theatre
Featuring Quatuor Bozzini: Clemens Merkel, violin; Alissa Cheung, violin; Stéphanie Bozzini, viola; and Isabelle Bozzini, cello

Renowned for their "extraordinary playing" (The New Yorker), Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini is a bold force in contemporary music, known for their unmistakable sound and deep commitment to new and experimental works. In this innovative program, they bring to life three world premieres co-commissioned with New York's Time:Spans Festival and Montreal's Le Vivier. Hear their interpretation of brand-new works by internationally acclaimed Canadian composers Taylor Brook, Zosha Di Castri, and Cassandra

Miller. This concert will include the world premieres of six short, compelling new works by participants in the Soundstreams Bridges Emerging Composers Program, developed under the mentorship of Zosha Di Castri and Cassandra Miller.

LOVE SONGS

April 9, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Jane Mallett Theatre
With David Fallis, Music Director; Carla Huhtanen, soprano; Gregory Oh, piano; and Noam Bierstone, percussion
Soundstreams' Love Songs-for seven singers, piano and percussion, explores love, identity, connection, and censorship through works that challenge and captivate. At the heart of the program are Claude Vivier's Love Songs and Shiraz-two intensely personal and spiritual works shaped in part by his travels to Japan, Indonesia and Iran. Previously toured by Soundstreams to the U.K. and Germany, London's The Guardian hailed Vivier's music in this program as "unruly and utterly distinctive." Ana Sokolović's Dring! Dring! playfully reflects on our complex relationship with our cell phones, and Nicole Lizée's The Filthy Fifteen, inspired by a 1985 list of songs compiled in the USA and deemed too obscene for public consumption, takes a subversive look at artistic censorship and the boundaries of expression. Together, these works challenge and captivate - offering a striking meditation on identity, connection, and the forces that shape what we hear, say, and create.

IN TERRA PAX