Upcoming Events
JoyRide
Thursday, September 24, 2026 – 7:30 PM
JoyRide brings together two of Canada’s most inventive performers for an evening that moves at the speed of pure delight. Oboist Colin Maier – a member of the world-touring ensemble Quartetto Gelato, with a résumé that runs from the Vancouver Olympics opening ceremony to Cirque du Soleil – trades classical formality for playful abandon, weaving jazz, tango, klezmer, and Romani influences into music built for connection, not just admiration. At the piano is Mark Camilleri, a music director and arranger whose credits include Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, and Il Divo, matching Maier’s energy with equal parts polish and warmth.
JoyRide moves fast, laughs often, and rewards audiences who come ready to be surprised. It’s an ideal night out for listeners who love musical craftsmanship but want their concert experience to feel alive.
The Odin Quartet
Thursday, October 29, 2026 – 7:30 PM
Formed in Toronto in 2015 and named for the “Norse god’s restless hunger for knowledge,” the Odin Quartet has built its reputation on pairing string-quartet tradition with curiosity: commissioning new Canadian works, serving since 2018 as Ensemble-in-Residence for the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, and drawing acclaim at festivals across the country. For Halloween Hauntings, that exploratory spirit twists toward the eerie: a program of festive, shadowy repertoire delivered with all the technical polish and interpretive depth the quartet brings to any classical masterwork.
Come see four exceptional musicians using Halloween as an occasion to explore some of the most atmospheric, unsettling, and beautiful music ever written, adapted for the string quartet. A perfect fit for anyone who wants their October thrills served with top-tier musicianship.
It Takes a Life
Sunday, February 7, 2027 – 7:30 PM
There’s an old saying about biography: it takes a life to study a life. Few people embody that better than Dr. Alan Walker: the Ancaster resident and McMaster University professor emeritus whose three-volume, twenty-five-year biography of Franz Liszt is considered one of the most important works ever written about a composer, praised by Time magazine as “without rival.” In 2025, the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest awarded Walker an honorary doctorate in recognition of a lifetime spent uncovering the man behind the myth of one of classical music’s most dazzling and misunderstood figures.
It Takes a Life brings that story to the screen: a portrait of a world-renowned scholar who has lived, quite literally, just down the road. Join us for the screening, followed by a reception in the Voortman Studio Theatre, celebrating a remarkable mind our community is lucky to call its own.
The Zodiac Trio
Saturday, March 27, 2027 – 7:30 PM
Since forming in New York in 2006 and relocating a year later to study at the Paris Conservatory —as the first American ensemble, and the first including a wind instrument, ever admitted to its celebrated chamber music program the Zodiac Trio has built an international career around a simple, classically unconventional idea: that clarinet, violin, and piano belong together. Radio France has called them “a breathtaking ensemble of virtuosity and sensitivity,” and in the two decades since, the trio has performed across nearly 40 U.S. states and more than a dozen countries, from Lincoln Center to Beijing.
Clarinetist Kliment Krylovskiy, violinist Vanessa Mollard, and pianist Riko Higuma bring together world-class technique and an easy, conversational chemistry chamber music at its most vivid and communicative. For classical purists and curious newcomers alike, it’s a rare chance to hear a genuinely distinctive ensemble at the height of its craft.
Tottering Biped : Hearing 'Pictures at an Exhibition'
Thursday, May 13, 2027 – 7:30 PM
Fair warning: this experience defies easy description. Hearing ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ pairs acclaimed movement artist Trevor Copp of Tottering Biped Theatre with a piano soloist for an experience that’s part concert, part live experiment, and entirely unlike anything else we’ve had in Peller Hall. Movement by movement, Mussorgsky’s beloved Pictures at an Exhibition is performed and reimagined multiple ways: through sound alone, through story, through the body… inviting the audience to discover how differently the same music can be heard depending on how it’s framed. At the end, the audience votes on which approach worked best.
Created by Copp and collaborator Mimi Han for Hamilton Culture Days and further developed at the Festival of the Sound, this is a truly original, innovative piece of performance art for listeners who love classical music and are curious what happens when you take it apart and put it back together right in front of you. Come with an open mind: you’ll leave with a new way of listening.
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