The 2025/26 season will be the 55th for Toronto’s New Music Concerts, a remarkable achievement of longevity for any contemporary or classical music organization. The season’s offerings are diverse, and range from internationally recognized works to brand new music. The goal, as always, is to expand on ideas of what musical performance can be, both for artists and audiences.
It’s also a season of collaborations, including a co-production with Tapestry Opera, partnerships with the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, and a roster of Canadian and international artists and composers.
We spoke to Artistic Director Brian Current about the upcoming concert season.
Brian Current: The Interview
The season kicks off with a concert of music by South African composer Andile Khumal
“This is someone who is really special,” Current says, noting Khumal’s growing international reputation. At the same time, he’s not well known in Canada.
“This someone I started hearing about, and got to know him more at a music festival in South Africa,” Brian says. “I went to see a concert of his work in Washington DC. It’ll be like a portrait concert of his work.”
The concert will also include a few pieces that he’s chosen to accompany his own music, including Australian Liza Lim‘s Inguz (Fertility) for clarinet and cello, Canadian Zosha di Castri‘s Anssi de Suite (2015) for solo cello, and German composer Carola Bauckholt‘s Klarinettentrio (1993) for clarinet, piano, and cello.
“He’s really an eloquent speaker,” Current adds. “His music really mixes a European sounds with [an] African sensibility. He’s got a doctorate at Columbia.” Canadians should be tuning in to his talent. “I think Toronto should get in on that conversation. I think that’s growing. There’s a real identity and a real sound,” he says.
“I want people to hear his music, but I also want people to hear him talk about his music.”
The 2025/26 Season
Current believes audiences are inspired by the arts. “We’re here to give people something fascinating […] the sublime unknown,” he says.
The sheer variety of what’s on offer reflects the very diverse world of contemporary music.
“We’re really honouring the past, but also looking to the future,” he says.
In classic NMC fashion, the season showcases both Canadian and international talent.
The season’s second concert features violinist Mark Fewer and percussionist Aiyun Huang in a program titled Mystery of Clock. The performance includes theatrical elements like lighting and stage design.
“It’s really a theatrical, surreal, ritual spectacle,” Current explains. “You have to see it to understand what’s going on.” He’s using a French team of designers to create the effects. “It’s an hour of really top notch percussion music theatre,” he says.
“I could easily see this playing in major festivals around the world.”
The project has been in development for some time, and is finally ready for a main stage presentation.
“It’s really a theatrical surreal experiment.”
February’s Black Box Music offers a unique concert experience. Essentially, a percussionist plays with a black box on stage. They place their hands inside the box, and the movements are projected in a large image on a screen. The musicians respond to the movements as they’re projected.
“That is really something special. It’s never come to Toronto,” Brian says. “It’s a mixture of exploring what a conductor is, video, and motion.” It’s a challenge for the musicians. “It’s really detailed and difficult to learn.”
Danish composer Simon Steen Andersen, who created the project, often leads it in rehearsals, Current says. “This is a very special person. This is really one not to be missed.”
Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs is a co-production with Tapestry Opera.
“It’s about many different kinds of love,” Current says. It includes phrases sung in 100 different languages. “That’s very Ana Sokolović. Her career is really kind of exploding internationally.”
The project began as a digital one during the COVID pandemic. “We made a video,” Brian says. “It did really well. We decided it would be fun to do a live version of it.”
Soprano Xin Wang will perform. “She’s amazing,” he says, “a monster at learning difficult vocal works.” That’s important with Sokolović’s often technically challenging pieces. “With Ana’s music, there’s never a dull moment. There’s never a note out of place. There’s never a note without imagination.”
Future Resonance Festival
“It’s now in our third edition,” Current says of the Festival. “It’s really special to us. We do this every two years.” He calls it a national forum, and it includes Toronto musicians and traditions who fall outside the conventional classical music circle.
“When we just do the Western classical tradition, we leave out half of Toronto.”
He firmly believes the next Ana Sokolović or Claude Vivier is just as likely to come from Scarborough or Markham as from downtown Toronto or Montréal. Without representation in that world, classical/contemporary music may just miss out.
“We’re going to lose those voices.”
The Festival includes a conference and panel discussion in partnership with the University of Toronto Faculty of Music that will be held at the STACKT Market. “It’s a fun atmosphere,” he says.
The main highlight of the Festival is the Swara Sutras Ensemble, who’ll be playing an hour of contemporary music infused with electronics.
“We’re going to add some staging and some lighting,” he adds. The idea is to create a show that can travel to other festivals to showcase Toronto talent.
The Ensemble was created by internationally recognized composer and music researcher Sandeep Bhagwati, working with nine Toronto musicians. It’s a cross-cultural project.
“[It shows] how good we are in working across traditions,” Current says. “It’s very Toronto, it’s very moving. It’s something I think we should export,” he adds. “I think really exciting things are happening here. We can be an example to the world.”
The Festival ends with a youth workshop at Evergreen Brick Works that will bring together a diverse collection of youth ensembles, including steel pan groups, and those specializing in traditional Chinese instruments. It will bring about 40 kids together to play with improvisation, and then come up with their own adventurous composition.
The 2025/26 Season At A Glance
There are six in-person concert dates for the 2025/2026 season, along with the Future Resonance Festival.
Ensemble Dal Niente performs Tracing Hollow Traces: A Portrait of Andile Khumalo (October 4, 2025)
Based in Chicago, Ensemble Dal Niente specializes in performing, developing, and sustaining new and experimental music for chamber ensembles. The ensemble’s name comes from the Italian phrase “from nothing”, and it tips the hat to the work Dal niente (Interieur III) by composer Helmut Lachenmann, a work that defied conventional rules of instrumental technique.
The ensemble has toured across Europe and North America, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC; The Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City; Radialsystem Berlin, MusicArte Festival in Panama City; The Library of Congress and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival; among others. They’ve recorded several albums.
They perform the music of South African composer Andile Khumalo, which draws on South African traditions, European avant-garde elements, Spectralism (in a nutshell, music that looks to emulate the spectral properties of sound, and which can contain harmonic and inharmonic frequencies), and jazz improvisation.
Born in Durban, South Africa, Andile Khumalo’s early music education included training at the a local community music centre. He’d go on to study at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. On graduation, he continued his studies in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart. Later, he studied and received his Doctor of Musical Arts at Columbia University, and today lectures at the University of Witwatersrand.
His music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, the Cologne New Music forum, International Society of Contemporary Music (Hong Kong), Switzerland, Sweden, Takefu International Music Festival (Japan) and in the United states by ensembles such as Sontonga String quartet, Ensemble Mosaik, Ensemble Baikonur, International Contemporary Ensemble (New York), members of Ensemble Vortex, and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.
Andile Khumalo will be at the concert, with Ensemble Dal Niente: Constance Volk — Flute; Katherine Jimoh — Clarinet; Juan Horie — Cello; Mabel Kwan — Piano.
At St. George by the Grange
Before the main concert, students of the Glenn Gould School will perform Khumalo’s The Broken Mirrors of Time.
Andile Khumalo’s The Broken Mirrors of Time (2021):
Mark Fewer and Aiyun Huang perform Mystery of Clock (November 9, 2025)
Co-produced with the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, this concert program asks the question, What if our lives were measured not by the hours on a clock, but by the rhythm of our emotions, memories, and relationships?
Mark Fewer and Aiyun Huang perform works that create a surreal soundscape through a combination of music, theatre, and lighting design. Each work explores a different mood. The program includes music by by Ehwa Hong (KOR/FRA), Alexandre Singier (FRA), Julia Cauley (FRA), Menelaos Peistikos (GRC), Erik Griswold (AUS/USA), I-Lly Cheng (TWN), Javier Álvarez (MEX), and J.S. Bach. The creative team includes Roland Auzet — Stage Direction; Denis Martin — Technical Direction; Cédric Delorme-Bouchard — Lighting Design.
At The Fleck at Harbourfront Centre Theatre
Black Box Music (February 21, 2026)
Simon Steen-Andersen’s international hit performance piece Black Box Music makes its long-awaited Toronto debut. The Berlin-based Danish composer, performer, director and media artist uses the gestures of a percussionist, projected on a huge screen, in a unique musical performance that’s sure to surprise.
The program also includes Messagesquisse (1976-77) for solo cello and 6 cellos, as a tribute to Pierre Boulez on his centenary anniversary, Neiges (1998) for 12 cellos by Kaija Saariaho, and the world premiere of Break My Hands! for one piano, six hands, by NMC’s Composer-in-Residence, Rashaan Allwood. The concert features Adam Rosenblatt — Percussion; Martin Gomes — Spoken Word; Amahl Arulanandam — Cello.
At the Betty Oliphant Theatre.
Ana Sokolović’s Love Songs (March 26 to 29, 2026)
This co-production with Tapestry Opera features theatrical adaptation and staging by Michael Hidetoshi Mori, and blends opera and dance with the lush music of Canadian composer Ana Sokolović. The genre-bending work follows a woman’s struggle to overcome loss, a ritual on memory and healing. Soprano Xin Wang sings in five languages, with declarations of love culled from more than 100 cultures.
At the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre
Future Resonance Festival (May 29 to 31, 2026)
The Future Resonance Festival returns with three events.
- The New Canon: Panel Discussion (May 29, 2026)
In partnership with the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, and in STACKT Market, the industrial-chic shipping container complex, leading voices in contemporary music, cultural studies, and performance will get together to talk about a provocative question: What would the musical canon look like if it began today? - Swara Sutras Ensemble in Concert (May 30, 2026)
This performance features the Swara Sutras Ensemble (Alyssa Delbaere-Sawchuk, Lasso Sanou, Lina Cao, Patty Chan, Atish Mukhopadhyay, and Jesse Dietschi) in a cross-cultural musical dialogue that includes improvisation and theatrical staging. They’ll be playing a group composition by the Ensemble, as well as music by Steven Webb, Tsz Long (Fish) Yu, Andrew Staniland, Laurie Radford and Myriam Boucher, performed on Métis fiddle, sarod, double bass, peul flute, guzheng, and erhu. Venue TBD. - SONAXIS (May 31, 2026)
This afternoon workshop will bring together youth orchestras from across Toronto’s many musical and cultural traditions. Community members are invited to attend the youth-focused event, which culminates in a performance at 3 p.m. The workshop will use guided improvisation and visual scores, including Canadian composer Linda Bouchard’s project Ocular Scores, to allow the young musicians to explore new ways of creating music together. At the BMO Atrium at Evergreen Brick Works.
Final Thoughts
As a composer and artist, along with his roles at NMC, and the Glenn Gould School, where he is director of the New Music Ensemble, Current has seen an uptick in interest and appreciation for new music over the last several years.
“We’re getting the youngest and most diverse audiences in our history,” he says of New Music Concerts, which he’s led since 2021.
Part of the appeal is that boundaries have been blurring between musical genres.
“Things are less siloed, which is exciting. The only constant is that things are changing,” he states. “It’s not one thing. For us, it’s really any music that, at any stage of your music journey, you learn something new,” he adds.
“You’re inspired in daily life.”
Experiencing live music is crucial. Seeing it in person draws you into the process of creation.
“It’s that mix of courage and beauty that I love.”
- Find concert details and tickets for the full 2025/26 season of New Music Concerts [HERE].
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