Centre National Des Arts Podcasts

NAC Orchestra Music Director Alexander Shelley talks with uOttawa Professor and Clara Schumann expert Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers about the Orchestra's recording project focusing on Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. The first release, recorded live in Southam Hall at the NAC, can be purchased online.…

In this episode of the NACOcast NAC Orchestra violinist Carissa Klopoushak interviews two founding violinists, Karoly Sziladi and Elaine Klimasko. They are joined by long time orchestra champion Evelyn Greenberg who was also the original harpsichordist and pianist of the orchestra. Together they share many wonderful memories, from first auditions t…

An advocate for Canadian music, Principal Cellist Rachel Mercer speaks with Sean Rice about her activities in and beyond the National Arts Centre Orchestra, including recording, commissioning and playing world premieres. Recorded prior to Rachel's Casual Friday debut with NACO and Alexander Shelley of the world premiere of Canadian pianist and comp…

In this archival episode of the NACOcast host Sean Rice, NAC Orchestra’s 2nd clarinetist, speaks with conductor Peter Oundjian weeks before his retirement as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2018. They discuss Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony and Peter shares memories from his student days at The Juilliard School, his first encounter w…

In this episode of the NACOcast host Sean Rice (Second clarinet, NAC Orchestra) speaks with Remy Siu Carrefour Composer (2017-2019) about his early interest in film as well as his multi-disciplinary studies at Simon Fraser Univeristy that sparked his love for artist collaboration. In 2015 in collaboration with Western Front, Remy fused his many int…

Sean Rice, NAC Orchestra 2nd clarinet, talks with Toronto-based Carrefour* Composer Ian Cusson. They talk about R. Murray Schaffer, Bulgarian women’s choirs, and unrelated studies at the University of Toronto before delving into his chosen career. During Ian’s two year Carrefour residency with the NAC Orchestra from 2017-2019, he was commissioned f…

Journalist and author Paul Wells has a fascinating conversation with composer Howard Shore about his passion for music making and acclaimed career as a composer for film, television and opera. Mr. Shore was at the National Arts Centre for the world premiere of his work The Forest: Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra which was commissioned by NAC Musi…

In this archival episode from 2016, NACOcast host Sean Rice connects with composer and pianist Timo Andres whose works were performed by members of the NAC Orchestra as part the WolfGANG Sessions. During their conversation Andres discusses the inspiration and structure of his compositions Early to Rise and Safe Travels and describes himself as a ve…

Host Sean Rice speaks with conductor Elim Chan who made her NAC main series debut in the 18-19 season. A past fellow in the NAC Orchestra’s Conductor’s Program, the Hong Kong-born musician has made her mark on the classical music circuit with her thoughtful and dynamic performances, imbued with energy and imagination. Elim and Sean discuss the expe…

Sean Rice, NAC Orchestra’s 2nd clarinetist, chats with Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot. At age fourteen Blake attended the NAC’s Young Artist Program and credits that experience for inspiring him to pursue a career in music. Sean and Blake discuss the pressures of music competitions, his relationship with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and …

In this episode of the NACOcast Sean Rice speaks with NAC Music Director Alexander Shelley. On the occasion of its 50th Anniversary, the National Arts Centre Orchestra will embark on a European tour in May 2019. CROSSINGS: the NAC Orchestra 50th Anniversary European Tour will feature concerts and collaborative community outreach events in 7 cities …

In this Points of View, around the presentation of Crow’s Theatre and Talk is Free Theatre’s production of The Wedding Party, NAC English Theatre Artistic Director Jillian Keiley hosts a discussion with special guests, Lisa Levia, Catering Sales Manager for NAC Food & Beverage and Kraig-Paul Proulx, Wedding & Special Events Designer & Coordinator, …

Sean Rice, NAC Orchestra’s 2nd clarinetist, chats with JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung on the occasion of NACO’s performance of her composition, Earworms. Discover when Sean and Vivian first met, what Vivian has been up to in her career and family life, and her inspiration for Earworms, which was commissioned by the NAC and premiered in Sou…

The NAC Orchestra’s Concertmaster Yosuke Kawasaki and Associate Concertmaster Jessica Linnebach speak with second clarinetist Sean Rice about their lives together, and their collaboration in the NACO’s February 2019 performance of Jocelyn Morlock’s Cobalt which just happens to be taking place on Valentine’s Day. The work is written for violin duet …

In this Points of View, around the holiday presentation of the Segal Centre For Performing Arts from Montreal’s The Hockey Sweater: A Musical, NAC English Theatre Artistic Director Jillian Keiley hosts a discussion with special guests, Author Roch Carrier on the history and creation of the story, leading to the musical, and a surprise visit from CS…

December marks the start of the application process for the NAC’s annual Young Artist Program (Y.A.P). To highlight this wonderful training program, Charles ‘Chip’ Hamann, Principal Oboe, NAC Orchestra and YAP faculty member guest hosts this episode of the NACOcast. Chip speaks with members of the 2018 YAP Wind Program about their experience being …

Kelly Rice, Director of Development and Lars Lih, Musicologist from McGill’s Schulich School of Music visited the NAC in January 2018 to hear John Storgårds conduct the NAC Orchestra and violinist Guy Braunstein perform two iconic works: Shostakovich’s 1st Violin Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Symphony. Both composers were Russian, but had differe…

Mabel Hubbard Bell was a strong, self-assured woman – bright, passionate, and a complete original. Despite a near-fatal case of childhood scarlet fever that cost her the ability to hear, she learned to talk and lip-read in multiple languages. At 19, she married a young inventor named Alexander Graham Bell and became the most significant influence i…

Sean Rice, second clarinetist of the NAC Orchestra, and Jessica Holmes, Postdoctoral Scholar of Musicology, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) met in September 2018, in the middle of the 2018 Festival Focus which saw the NAC Orchestra perform all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies. Jessica, formerly a cello performance student, has spent th…

Sean Rice talks with NACO Principal Pops conductor Jack Everly about his perspectives on music and upcoming NAC Orchestra Pops concerts. Find out some interesting details about Maestro Everly’s career path (“one thing leads to the next”) and discover some of the wonderful artists with whom he’s had the pleasure to work.…

Sean Rice, NAC Orchestra’s 2nd clarinetist, and NAC Music Director Alexander Shelley complete their three-episode series on Beethoven’s nine symphonies for the 2018 Beethoven Focus Festival. The seventh symphony’s funeral march starts off the conversation. The 1813 premiere of the work featured an encore of the funeral march. What made it so signif…

Sean Rice and Alexander Shelley continue their three-episode series about the Beethoven Symphonies on the occasion of the NAC Orchestra’s Festival Focus 2018. Symphonies 4, 5 and 6 were running in Beethoven’s head concurrently. He was a master of making a huge work out of just a scrap of a musical idea. These three symphonies are excellent examples…

Sean Rice, 2nd clarinetist of the NAC Orchestra, and Alexander Shelley, NAC Music Director, discuss Ludwig van Beethoven’s first three symphonies, putting them in context with Mozart’s and Haydn’s large volume of works. Why are Beethoven’s symphonies so significant and important? The 2018 Festival Focus is the perfect opportunity for this discussio…

Karina Canellakis is the newly appointed Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Amsterdam, beginning in the 19/20 season. Winner of the 2016 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Karina is internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth. She made her European condu…

Based on the novel by Ottawa’s beloved Brian Doyle, Up to Low is the magical and mystical tale of a young boy’s journey to manhood. Twelve-year-old Tommy is on the road with his father and volatile family friend Frank, heading back to the cabin they haven’t visited since Tommy’s mother died. But Tommy also remembers Bridget, whose eyes are the deep…

“Every time a child passed through the station, the child wanted to stop, and every time, the adult with them pulled them along on their way.” Sean Rice interviews author Kathy Stinson, illustrator Dušan Petričić and composer Anne Dudley who all had a hand in creating the music performed by the NAC Orchestra’s telling of The Man With The Violin in …

Centred around the cataclysmic 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami Carried Away on the Crest of a Wave illustrates how world events link us all together. From two brothers in Malaysia trying to save their house from sinking, a Canadian radio-show host angered by disaster-relief efforts, a grieving Japanese father, to a lonely woman in Utah baking a pie, the …

Natasha Gauthier of Artsfile.ca interviews pianist Alice Sara Ott and conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen who performed the Grieg Piano Concerto together with the NAC Orchestra, at the NAC, in January 2018. Join them as they talk about personal firsts, world travels, and the whirlwind life of a musician.…

Sean Rice, second clarinetist of the NAC Orchestra, interviews the five apprentices who participated in the NAC's annual Institute for Orchestral Studies in the fall of 2017. They were: Alexander Volkov, violin Gabrielle Bouchard, violin Alisa Klebanov, viola Grace Sommer, cello Talia Hatcher, double bass The Institute for Orchestral Studies (IOS) …

Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro, a well-travelled artist, talks with Sean Rice about her first time with the Pina Bausch dance company and with the NAC Orchestra, all in the same week in September 2017.By Canada's National Arts Centre

Celebrated theatre-maker Robert Lepage returns to the NAC with an autobiographical journey through his childhood in a Quebec just beginning to awaken to its own promise. Unable to memorize a poem he must recite, Lepage uses the “memory palace” technique, assigning stanzas to the familiar rooms of his childhood home. But re-opening the doors to each…

Sean Rice interviewed the NAC Orchestra’s principal oboe Chip Hamann about his new album, a two-disc album that was released in June 2017. It was the first classical recording at the Isabel Bader Centre in Kingston. What a fantastic and incredible hall to record! The double-cd set is called Canadian Works for Oboe and Piano, a collaboration with Ot…

It’s mid-rehearsal, and two actors playing Lauren and Larry deliver their lines. All is well until the real Larry wanders onstage. When the real Lauren – who, it seems, is also the playwright – leaps up from the audience, chaos ensues. Throw in some rogue spectators, a corrupt senator, lion dancers, ghostly ancestors, and a few firecrackers, and yo…

Evgeni Onegin is a charismatic and bored bad boy who makes ruinous choices at every turn, leaving devastation in his wake. Based on Alexander Pushkin’s serial poem about unrequited love in 19th century Russia, this sweeping and romantic story for the ages gets a hip and acclaimed new theatrical treatment. With inventive choreography and a sharp, 21…

Robert Chafe is a 2010 Governor General Award recipient for his play, Afterimage. His extensive body of work also includes such plays as Place of First Light, Charismatic Death Scenes, Belly Up, Emptygirl, Oil and Water, Butler's Marsh, and Tempting Providence. Butler's Marsh and Tempting Providence also earned Robert a 2004 Governor General Award …

Principal Bassist, Joel Quarrington, joins us to talk about his brand new solo album, Schubert: An die Musik, that he recorded with Canadian pianist, David Jalbert. We discuss his love of the music that he recorded and his album release at this year's Double Bass Convention in Ithaca, NY.By Canada's National Arts Centre

Maestro Alexander Shelley shares his thoughts on the National Arts Centre Orchestra's 2017-18 opening festival of music, Ideas of North - featuring an array of Scandinavian composers and performers, including many of Sibelius' symphonies and tone poems. Principal Guest Conductor, John Storgårds, will perform Kaiji Saariaho's Violin Concerto and Gue…

Incendiary Canadian playwright Brad Fraser (Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love) makes his long-awaited return to the NAC with Kill Me Now, a gritty black comedy leavened with profound humanity. Widower Jake Sturdy cares for his severely disabled teenage son Joey until unexpected news leads to an astonishing role reversal. Devast…

In this bilingual panel discussion on Creation and Collaboration that preceded the world premiere of ENCOUNT3RS (April 20-22, 2017), animator Catherine Clark speaks with the six Canadian artists involved in this historic NAC dance-music commission celebrating Canada 150. Following a discussion between Executive Producer of Dance Cathy Levy and Musi…

The ghosts of the Donnellys return to tell their side of things. A raucous, wall-of-sound rock opera, Vigilante tells the explosive true tale of a ruthless Irish immigrant family and an entire town bent on revenge. Based on the unsolved 1880 massacre of Ontario’s notorious Donnelly family, Vigilante is a stomping, swaggering and compulsively watcha…

The cynical, skeptical daughter of a theoretical physicist and a composer, Sarah Jean’s clinical approach to love meets with little success. In this absorbing drama infused with science and classical music, three exceptional minds collide like charged particles in an accelerator. Sarah Jean’s hugely talented yet severely dysfunctional family will l…

Sean Rice and Alexander Shelley talk about the "Soul Stirring Music" coming up in the 2017-2018 season of the NAC Orchestra. "I am full of anticipation for the NAC Orchestra season ahead and the glorious music that awaits us. We will host some of the finest performers in the world - artists like Itzhak Perlman, Emanuel Ax, Lang Lang, Angela Hewitt,…

A sweeping drama of personal and political ambition follows soon-to-be Premier Joey Smallwood – the self-described “Last Father of Confederation” – as he propels the Dominion of Newfoundland into union with Canada in 1949. Both saint and sinner, the charismatic, controversial Smallwood is hounded every step of the way by witty, booze-soaked reporte…

In Victorian London, bitter, selfish Ebenezer Scrooge spends Christmas Eve counting his money. But unexpected visits by the ghost of his former partner Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come change his life forever. This heart-warming classic tale of redemption and the true meaning of the season is a unique, stylish new p…

In celebration of Beethoven and Schumann – two highly expressive and innovative composers, the NAC Orchestra created an eclectic evening of music, dance and art called Classical Collisions. Fine art inspired graffiti artists while classical music mixed with DJ scratching - and everybody danced. Artist Anita Kunz, who was commissioned to create the …

In this exhilaratingly original, multimedia one-man show, actor / comedian / radio broadcaster Tetsuro Shigematsu tells the dynamic story of an emotionally distant father whose legacy is felt beyond his lifetime. From the ashes of Hiroshima to swinging 1960s London, Akira’s incredible personal history continues to influence two generations. Separat…

November 16 & 17 was the world-premiere of Peter Paul Koprowski's Concertante for Double Bass, Strings and Percussion, written for and performed by the NAC Orchestra’s own world-class, mega-talented principal double bass Joel Quarrington. Sean talks with Joel about his roots, his training and his career as a double bass player. Excerpts of Peter Pa…

Get back to your roots! “If you want to know a black woman, you touch her hair,” says Novelette of the clients in her Toronto hair salon. ‘da Kink is raw, energetic theatre, showcasing eight fascinating, multi-faceted women. With riffs on sexuality, families and inner lives, this theatrical kaleidoscope is accompanied by live rhythm-and-blues and g…

Did you know the Canadian Brass shares founding members with the National Arts Centre Orchestra!? Join Sean Rice in a conversation about the history and future of Canadian Brass with founding member Chuck Daellenbach and newest member Caleb Hudson. Chuck shares stories like filling in with the NAC Orchestra, getting to Carnegie Hall by way of child…

In this final Points of View of the 2015/16 season, Artistic Director Jillian Keiley hosts a discussion with two special guests, Belles Soeurs Producer Allan Sandler and Joël Beddows, Outgoing Director, Department of Theatre, University of Ottawa / Incoming Artistic Director, Théâtre français de Toronto, about the impact of Michel Tremblay’s Les Be…