Ambitious creation brings together composers with eight stellar musicians and a host of production experts for roving musical adventure
Vancouver, BC – Music on Main presents the world premiere of The Tempest Project, running July 17-22, 2024 at the Vancouver Playhouse. The incredible production invites audiences to embark on a music-filled journey, as they travel through the sound-and-light enveloped lobbies, halls, and backstage areas of the 62-year-old venue. Drawing upon themes in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this musically and theatrically audacious production weaves love, magic, and wonder into a poetic meditation on universal challenges.
“Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, has inspired artists for more than 400 years. It’s filled with storms and magic, and its themes of revenge, forgiveness, power struggle, and freedom continue to feel relevant today,” says David Pay, Artistic Director of Music on Main and Director of The Tempest Project. “We’re using those themes as the inspiration for musical scenes that we’re setting throughout the Playhouse, and we’ll lead small groups of audiences on various paths through the theatre. As they travel, they’ll be greeted with live performances, recordings from hidden speakers, projections, lighting, audio-and-optical illusions, and more. The ultimate aim is to pull audiences into a ‘strange new world’ and challenge their very definition of what a music performance can be.”
Inspired by the themes that have made Shakespeare’s Tempest such an endearing work, the world premiere experience will use music to access motifs of revenge and forgiveness, freedom, betrayal, and redemption. The diverse ensemble of musicians and creators developing the project – The Tempest Project Company – bring their insights as an intercultural collective to these explorations, imbuing the project’s layers of meaning with their own lived experiences.
More than five years in the making, the project integrates the contributions of a rich team of musicians, composers, designers, and theatre practitioners. Led by Artistic Director David Pay and Artistic Planning & Operations Manager and Producer Shayna Goldberg, the creation process has blended techniques from devised theatre, intercultural collaboration, and contemporary music composition, along with workshops on a vast array of subjects, including history and social sciences.
To craft the work’s otherworldly sounds, the project has commissioned pieces from Gabriel Kahane, a musician and storyteller lauded by The New Yorker as “one of the finest songwriters of the day”; Nancy Tam, a musician specializing in theatrical, multi-channel sound creations; the multi-faceted Alfredo Santa Ana, whose body of work includes live classical compositions, electronic music, and playing lead guitar in an avant-prog rock band; and Saina Khaledi, an award-winning Iranian-Canadian musician and member of The Tempest Project Company who teaches santour at Capilano University. In addition, there are improvised arrangements based on Solange’s “Things I Imagined,” as well as other works.
Their music will be brought to life by an eclectic and unconventional assemblage of extraordinary musicians, including: Julia Ulehla, vocals; Paolo Bortolussi, flute; Aram Bajakian, guitar; Saina Khaledi, santour; Dailin Hsieh, zheng; Julia Chien, percussion; Jonathan Lo, cello; and Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano. The team also includes Dramaturg Melanie Yeats and Production Manager Alexis Douglas.
Music on Main gratefully acknowledges the generous support of The Tempest Project’s Presenting Sponsor: RBC
For tickets and further information, visit: musiconmain.ca
About Music on Main (musiconmain.ca)
Music on Main has developed an international reputation as one of today’s leading-edge classical and contemporary music programmers. Their goal is to connect people by developing artists’ and audiences’ relationship to music, to each other, and to themselves. They present top-flight musicians, offering a mix of classical, new, and genre-bending music in casual, welcoming environments. Music on Main has produced over 700 events featuring over 1,800 musicians and 130 world premieres at Heritage Hall on Main Street, the now-closed Cellar Restaurant, Jazz Club in Kitsilano, and various other venues throughout Metro Vancouver. The music has touched the souls of thousands of listeners and has helped connect artists from around the world with Vancouver audiences.
| LISTING INFORMATION | Music on Main presents The Tempest Project |
| Dates: | July 17-22, 2024 |
| Ticket Prices: | From $30 |
| Address: | Vancouver Playhouse 600 Hamilton Street |
| Tickets & Info: | musiconmain.ca |