Soundstreams 2025/26 season features the usual eclectic mix of innovative and compelling music that Toronto audiences have come to expect of the organization for more than four decades.
The performer lineup includes ensembles and artists like Quatuor Bozzini, Steven Dann, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, and Carla Huhtanen, along with some of the city’s most in-demand musicians and singers in Ensemble Soundstreams and Soundstreams Choir 21.
The list of composers includes Canadian and international luminaries: Benjamin Britten, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, R. Murray Schafer, and Claude Vivier, along with Next Generation Composers Andrew Balfour, Cassandra Miller, Zosha Di Castri, Nicole Lizée, Anna Pidgorna, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Ana Sokolović.
LvT spoke to Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney, who founded Soundstreams back in 1982, about this year’s lineup.
Soundstreams 2025/26 at a Glance
Mass For The Endangered (November 22, 2025)
Featuring David Fallis, Conductor, Soundstreams Choir 21, and Ensemble Soundstreams
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered has been much lauded both for its music and its compelling examination of humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir: Arvo Pärt At 90 (February 14, 2026)
Tõnu Kaljuste, Artistic Director
The world-renowned Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, with founder and conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, make a return to Toronto to celebrate Arvo Pärt’s 90th birthday. Along with Pärt’s most celebrated works, the concert includes music by Philip Glass, Luciano Berio, and others, and 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)
Featuring Quatuor Bozzini: Clemens Merkel, violin; Alissa Cheung, violin; Stéphanie Bozzini, viola; and Isabelle Bozzini, cello
The program features three world premieres co-commissioned with New York’s Time:Spans Festival and Montreal’s Le Vivier by Canadian composers Taylor Brook, Zosha Di Castri, and Cassandra
Miller. Also on the program: the world premieres of six short 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)
With David Fallis, Music Director; Carla Huhtanen, soprano; Gregory Oh, piano; and Noam Bierstone, percussion
Claude Vivier’s Love Songs and Shiraz forms the heart of this program for seven singers, piano and percussion that explores love, identity, connection, and censorship.
In Terra Pax (May 9, 2026)
Featuring Anna Pidgorna, vocals; Steven Dann, viola; Anna Sagalova, piano; and Ensemble Soundstreams
In Terra Pax (On Earth, Peace) is a program curated by Anna Pidgorna — winner of the New Voices Curator Mentorship Program — that reflects on war and its destruction, and the resilience to go on. Pidgorna performs as composer and vocalist, with displaced Ukrainian pianist Anna Sagalova (now based in Vancouver), and violist Steven Dann.
Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney: The Interview
Two larger themes resonate throughout the 43rd season: speaking to social issues, and examining human and spiritual relationships.
“There will always be overarching themes in a given season,” Cherney says. “Next year, there’s quite a lot that’s connected to social justice.” Notably, that includes the season’s opening concert featuring Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered. “It’s a concert that’s reflecting on what we’re doing to our environment.” It’s not necessarily an apocalyptic view. “We don’t always have an opportunity in music to reflect on bigger things.”
Much later in the season comes In Terra Pax. “It is about war and peace, and resilience.”
While the themes revolve around the current situation in Ukraine, it’s a much more widespread theme. “There’s a lot of people in the world who are dying who shouldn’t be dying.”
It’s not about preaching, though, it’s more about reflection. “We’re not setting ourselves up to teach anybody anything,” he says. The news is already full of headlines about conflict from so many places in the world. “We’re not teaching people things, but we hope we can cast light on something on things that have become a bit obscured,” he adds.
“What the arts can do, is we can help audiences and ourselves to reflect on things. Art for art’s sake is wonderful but this season has connections to other issues,” he says.
“The other theme isn’t literally love, but it’s about human relationships, spiritual relationships.”
Marking a major milestone is incorporated into that mix.
“We’ve had a very special relationship with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir,” Cherney says. It will be the 8th time they’ve appeared on a Soundstreams program. Their most recent Toronto concert, in 2024, was sold out.
Along with his milestone birthday celebration, Arvo Pärt’s work has a spiritual dimension. “No matter your belief system, somehow Arvo Pärt touches us.”
The Love Songs repertoire is less about spirit, and more about humanity. “This one is more down to earth, about relationships among us.”
Claude Vivier’s Love Songs and Shiraz is the heart of the program. “It’s humorous, but it’s also a profound look at what love means.”
Other pieces include works by Ana Sokolovic and Nicole Lizée. “Her piece on the program is quite a contrast,” he says of the latter. “It’s called the filthy 15.” It refers to a list of songs that had been suggested for banning in the United States, and includes quotes from Frank Zappa opining on censorship, among other things.
“Again, it’s, like so much of Nicole’s work, something of a parody.”
Canadian Composers
The work of Canadian composers is peppered throughout the year’s program of five concerts.
“That’s what we’re on the earth to do, is to foster Canadian music,” says Cherney.
It’s not only about including Canadian works, it’s about putting them into an international context.
“I think we do the best for Canadian creators when we put them on a world stage,” he says. “We put them together with the world’s best,” he adds. “We’ll program a very famous international composer, but often we’ll commission a new work that will be performed on that same program.”
He points out that the concert with Estonian Philharmonic Choir includes a newly commissioned work by Estonian-Canadian composer Riho Esko Maimets.
“It’s a great opportunity, but it’s also a great challenge,” Cherney says. “Underneath it all, we’re saying we have talent in this country that is equal to talent that’s out there in the world. The Soundstreams stage is in a sense reflecting the world,” he adds.
New Music
Introducing audiences to new music of any genre is a challenge.
“We also have an opportunity to give context for new music,” Lawrence explains “There’s wonderful new music being written everywhere.” Many new composers, he points out, are known in their area, but not outside, and not overseas.
“Our platform is an opportunity.”
The art of programming lies in offering themes that help audiences make sense of the music and its message.
“We try to give a context.”
He mentions Benjamin Britten’s iconic Lachrymae, part of the program for In Terra Pax. “The theme is bang on for the context,” he says. The piece for viola and string orchestra makes use of the solo instrument’s tonal range using a variety of techniques, with colours that lean towards Eastern European music. It makes the perfect accompanying piece to the concert’s main work, a commission by Pidgorna for voice, piano and string orchestra that is influenced by the Ukrainian tradition of female lamentation singing.
“It’s an opportunity for us to help people to find a way in,” he says. Sometimes, a piece doesn’t connect simply because it’s not the right environment for it. “It’s always easy to blame audiences,” he says.
“We as concert producers have a great responsibility to think hard about creating an experience for the audience to appreciate every work on a program.” Connecting works via themes and ideas adds to the experience from an audience perspective. “A wonderful performance will have so many levels of meaning.”
Properly done, the audience should simply enjoy a seamless, easy kind of flow of sounds and ideas. Later, they might wonder about how it was all put together.
Quatuor Bozzini: Canadians in the Spotlight
The concert featuring Quatuor Bozzini includes works co-commissioned by three artists Cherney calls “three stars of Canadian music” — London-based Cassandra Miller, Zosha Di Castri (a full professor at Columbia as well as a performer), and Victoria-based Taylor Brook.
“No one of them sounds like the other. There’s real contrast in aesthetic and style.”
Miller and Brook have previous written music for the Bozzinis. “The quartet is quite adventurous,” Cherney says. “This particular concert is interesting for two reasons: the music is very worthwhile. We think these are three of the real rising stars of Canadian composers,” he says. “This particular concert includes those three works and also six short works by the RBC Bridges Emerging Composer program.”
Cassandra and Zosha will be mentoring the six emerging composers, three Canadian and three international, during the week leading up to the concert.
“They show up with short, five minute works,” he says of the process. During the week, the six younger composers receive mentoring, get help with possible revisions, and more.
“It’s quite interesting. It’s also really important to Soundstreams.”
- Find more information, tickets and subscriptions to the Soundstreams 2025/26 season [HERE].
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