Winnipeg New Music Festival
- Where
- Centennial Concert Hall & Desautels Concert Hall - View Map
- When
- Buy
- Buy Tickets
- Website
- https://www.wnmf.ca/
The 34th annual Winnipeg New Music Festival (WNMF), showcasing world premieres and exciting up-and-coming composers, takes center stage in the prairie winter across two exciting venues from Tuesday, January 21 to Saturday, January 25, 2025.
The WNMF has grown to be one of Canada’s premiere cultural events dedicated to contemporary art and the largest festival of its kind in Canada dedicated
entirely to contemporary art music. WNMF 2025 passes are on sale now at $89/adults, $49/children. Single tickets start at $25.
Anchored at the Centennial Concert Hall, and supported by another exciting venue, the Desautels Concert Hall, the WNMF will delight audiences and draw the Winnipeg community together, transforming the city into an international artistic hub in the heart of the Canadian prairies. The complete lineup of the WNMF is available at wnmf.ca.
WNMF 1: Samy Moussa – January 21, 2025
To open the Winnipeg New Music Festival this year, the WSO welcomes back Canadian composer and conductor Samy Moussa who has twice been featured at WNMF with his orchestral music.
He returns to lead the orchestra from the podium in a program that plays on light and shadow, from Dark Patterns by American composer-pianist Timo Andres, to Moussa’s own Nocturne, and circling back to Dawning by Welsh master Huw Watkins. The evening culminates in Moussa’s monumental Symphony No. 2.
WNMF 2: Raiskin Conducts Rouse & Gourzi – January 23, 2025
The second orchestral concert of this year’s festival features two works that both, in their way, grapple with the connection between worlds.
Opening the program, we welcome Greek composer Konstantia Gourzi and trumpet soloist Simon Höfele to Winnipeg, collaborating on Ypsilon for trumpet and orchestra.
Symphony No. 6 was the last completed work by the great American composer Christopher Rouse before his death in 2019. Part of a set of works he referred to as his “Death Cycle”, he composed this final symphony as an epitaph to himself. A powerful and introspective work, Rouse chose not to share the personal meaning he conceived for it, instead inviting the audience to absorb and interpret its mysteries each on our own terms.
WNMF 3: Attacca Quartet – January 24, 2025
Taking a decidedly brighter thematic turn, WNMF heads to Winnipeg’s sparkling new Desautels Concert Hall to present the scintillating string stylings of the Attacca Quartet.
The New York City-based ensemble has garnered numerous accolades since its foundation, including two Grammy awards for their collaborations with composer Caroline Shaw.
The playfully virtuosic program features two of Shaw’s works, alongside Gabriella Smith’s irreverent Carrot Revolution, Mingjia Chen’s cross-stylistic floatwalking, and the sizzling Dark Energy by Canadian master Kelly-Marie Murphy.
The evening culminates in the tour de force of string quartet writing LIFT by composer and Kronos Quartet cellist Paul Wiancko.
WNMF 4: Absolute Jest – January 25, 2025
For this closing concert of WNMF 2025, music director Daniel Raiskin and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra begin with two nature-inspired Canadian works. Manitoban Nic Bray first presents the world premiere of his Spruce, the winning piece of this year’s CMC Emerging Composer Competition. We are then joined by Montreal-based Keiko Devaux for her texturally rich Listening Underwater.
The festival comes to a resounding end as the WSO is joined by the Attacca Quartet for a performance of the concerto for string quartet Absolute Jest by American master John Adams.