Conductor Alex Pauk and the Esprit Orchestra (Photo: Karen Reeves)

Toronto’s Esprit Orchestra opens their 2025/26 season with a concert titled Tour de Force on November 30 — a program infused with drama and beauty that launches the second edition of Esprit’s Edge of Your Seat International Festival.

The concert program has an international flavour, including a World Premiere from Canadian Christopher Goddard, reprise performances of works by British composers Thomas Adès and Ben
Nobuto, a Canadian Premiere by American Gabriella Smith, and a new work by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

The Program

Thomas Adès: Overture to the Tempest (2004)

Thomas Adès’ Overture to the Tempest is a past Esprit audience favourite. The work is a distillation of Adès’ acclaimed opera based on Shakespeare’s work of the same name. The opera, written when the composer was 33, made a splash on its debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and was acclaimed by both audiences and critics. The opera, and the overture by itself, have been widely performed across Europe and in North America since. Overture (Storm) begins with the tempest at full power from the very first bar in a relentless drive that encompasses every section of the orchestra.

Anna Thorvaldsdottir: ARCHORA (2022)

ARCHORA was commissioned by the BBC Proms, and co-commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Klangspuren Schwaz. At its heart is the concept of a primordial energy and a parallel universe that is familiar and strange at the same time. It’s a dramatic piece of extremes, and conflict expressed in slowly shifting textures between elements that see themselves as being in opposition to each other, while sharing a forgotten and common past.

Christopher Goddard: a brace, a round, a bracing sound (2025) World Premiere

Goddard’s piece was commissioned by Esprit Orchestra with support from the Epstein Family Trust. The music is characterized by dense rhythmic patterns and interlocking lines that create a kind of woven music structure. It’s the third work of Goddard’s that has been commissioned by Esprit.

Ben Nobuto: Serenity 2.0 (2021)

In the composer’s notes, Noboto writes, “SERENITY 2.0 takes the form of a guided meditation that’s continually derailed. Listeners are invited to enter into a relaxed, meditative state, despite knowing well that any kind of serenity here is impossible.” The piece stops and starts at various points, seemingly at random, tempos fluctuate, and a variety of elements from diverse sources such as 80s Japanese pop, TED Talks, and Baroque music, among others, are thrown into the mix.

Gabriella Smith: Tumblebird Contrails (2014) Canadian Premiere

American composer and activist Gabriella Smith was inspired by the dramatic changes of the California coastline in her work Tumblebird Contrails. The work was commissioned by the Pacific Harmony Foundation (John Adams and Deborah O’Grady) for the 2014 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. In her program notes, Smith describes a moment she experienced on a backpacking trek in Point Reyes when she heard the various sounds of the ocean — from the cries of gulls to the pounding surf as it ebbed and flowed — while watching birds playing in the winds as jet trails cut across the sky. The title is a “nonsense phrase” inspired by Kerouac. Three of Smith’s pieces were performed at the first edition of the Edge of Your Seat Festival in 2024.

Tour de Force

Alex Pauk conducts the orchestra. The concert will be preceded by Musical Insights (formerly Pre-Concert Talks) with composer Alexina Louie and special guests, beginning at 7:15 p.m.

Find concert details and tickets [HERE].

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Anya Wassenberg

Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto City Editor at Ludwig Van. Previously, she was a freelance writer with a specialty in culture and travel for three decades, and a creative writing instructor for Ontariolearn.