VANCOUVER, BC – Vancouver New Music’s 2025-26 season celebrates the transformative power of sound with an inspiring lineup of international, Canadian, and local artists. The season opens with soundscape artist Yota Kobayashi’s Shiki & Kū, a collaborative immersive installation presented in partnership with VIVO Media Arts Centre, Formscape Arts and IM4 Media Lab, followed by this year’s VNM Festival, Whispered Folds, featuring eight groundbreaking artists exploring themes of intimacy, boundaries, and borders.
Throughout the year, our On Curation Mentorship Project showcases emerging curatorial voices presenting innovative artists and concepts. International highlights of this season include the Vancouver debut of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist ganavya, co-presented with Chan Centre in collaboration with Indian Summer Festival, as well as the BC premiere of the drum and dance powerhouse performance, Manifesto, by award-winning Stephanie Lake Company, co-presented with DanceHouse. Join us for a season that challenges and expands our understanding of sound, music, and performance.
Tickets on sale now! Visit www.newmusic.org for more information.
SEASON SCHEDULE
Shiki & Kū
Yota Kobayashi (Vancouver), Ryo Kanda (Tokyo), Quartetto Maurice (Turin), Rurihiko Hara (Shizuoka), Aiko Hatanaka (Tokyo) and Mark Takeshi McGregor (Vancouver)
September 13-28, 2025
VIVO Media Arts Centre (2625 Kaslo St)
Co-presented by VIVO Media Arts and Formscape Arts in partnership with VNM and IM4 Media
Lab
Vancouver-based soundscape artist Yota Kobayashi transforms VIVO Media Arts Centre with Shiki & Kū, an immersive audiovisual installation featuring two thematically paired works: Shinshiki & Kūsou. Rooted in the Japanese philosophical concepts of shiki (form, tangible reality) and kū (emptiness, impermanence), the exhibition interweaves spatial sound, generative visuals, and cultural symbolism.
VNM Festival
Whispered Folds
October 16 – 18, 2025 | 8pm
ANNEX (823 Seymour St)
Whispered Folds is a metaphor for the overlapping layers of identity, experience, and resonances that we wish to explore during this year’s VNM festival. Using sound as a powerful medium to reimagine relationships between individuals, cultures and spaces, the artists invite us to consider how sound reflects and disrupts physical, psychological, and cultural borders. Artists: Anaïs Maviel (US), Brady Marks (Vancouver), Cecilia Lopez (Argentina/US), Émilie Payeur (Montreal), Erin Gee (Montreal), JJJJJerome Ellis (US), Parmela Attariwala (Vancouver), Vica Pacheco (Mexico/Belgium)
VNM Festival: Installation
Murmurs of Memory
October 16 – 18, 2025
Vancouver Public Library, Central Library (350 West Georgia St, Level 8)
Presented in partnership with Vancouver Public Library
Part of this year’s VNM Festival, Murmurs of Memory is a multi-channel audio installation at Vancouver Public Library that invites visitors to experience resonant soundscapes that evoke collective and personal memories.
ganavya (India/US)
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 7:30pm
Chan Shun Concert Hall at Chan Centre (6265 Crescent Rd)
Co-presented with the Chan Centre in collaboration with Indian Summer Festival
ganavya is a boundary-defying artist whose voice and vision transcend genre. She makes her
Vancouver debut performing Nilam, a luminous new work that coalesces lullaby, poetry, and
prayer into powerful, poignant music.
On Curation Mentorship Project: Curated by Anju Singh (Vancouver)
Artifacts I: Zero Input Enclosure Movement (ZIEM)
Saturday, February 14, 2026 | 8pm
ANNEX (823 Seymour St)
Zero Input Enclosure Movement (ZIEM) is an 8-channel sculptural sound installation created by Winnipeg-based artist AO Roberts. This momentary sound sculpture exhibition prompts audiences to weave and shift their sonic focus in timed space in a presented exhibition performance. Three artists from across disciplines will be invited to present a performance or interaction with the installation for the evening event. Performances will be followed by an opportunity for audience members to interact with the sculpture and experience it as an installation. Mentor: Raven Chacon (Diné)
On Curation Mentorship Project: Curated by Freya Zinovieff (Vancouver)
Listening as Activism
Saturday, April 11, 2026 | 6:30pm
ANNEX (823 Seymour St)
Listening as Activism explores how deep listening can be a form of resistance and social engagement in our noise-saturated world. In what ways might our individual and collective listening be aimed towards activism, and what might this look, sound and feel like? The evening opens with a roundtable discussion with Renae Morriseau (Cree/Salteaux), Harsha Walia (Vancouver), Hildegard Westerkamp (Vancouver) and Freya Zinovieff, moderated by Laura Netz, followed by performances by M’Girl Music and Soul Sessions (Sunshine Coast). Mentor: Laura Netz (Spain/UK)
Stephanie Lake Company (Australia): Manifesto
April 16-18, 2026 | 8pm
Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton St)
Co-presented with DanceHouse
Multi-award winning Stephanie Lake Company’s Manifesto channels ancient rituals of catharsis through nine dancers and nine drummers on nine drum kits, with music composed by renowned audiovisual artist and musician Robin Fox (Australia).
On Curation Mentorship Project: Curated by Terri Hron (Montreal)
A Voynich Manifesto
Saturday, May 9, 2026 | 8pm
ANNEX (823 Seymour St)
An immersive, collaborative audiovisual performance, A Voynich Manifesto takes inspiration from a mysterious medieval manuscript, written in an unknown language that describes and visualizes plants and star charts unknown to us on Earth. Exploring themes of indecipherability and hidden meanings in sound, shadow theatre duo Mind of a Snail (Chloé Ziner & Jessica Gabriel, Vancouver) and vocalists SJ Kirsch (Vancouver) and Viviane Houle (Victoria) create this reenchanted world in collaboration with Hron. Mentor: Peter Hatch (Salt Spring Island)
ABOUT VANCOUVER NEW MUSIC
Vancouver New Music (VNM) engages communities in the exploration, creation and experience of visionary new music. VNM is dedicated to exploring and contextualizing new music and sonic art through concert presentations, festival, community, and workshop events. VNM regularly commissions and premieres new works by Canadian composers, and presents leading and emerging artists, international composers and performers, and sound installations. VNM produces an annual festival that focuses each year on a theme within the new music landscape, and explores the interaction of contemporary music with other disciplines such as theatre, installation, and media arts. Other activities include lectures and workshops with visiting artists, community presentations, and other new music related community events.
Find Vancouver New Music at www.newmusic.org.
