The National Arts Centre Orchestra will celebrate the year of jazz great Oscar Peterson’s 100th birthday with interpretations of his work at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The National Arts Centre Orchestra is bringing works by Oscar Peterson, international premieres from Canadian composers Keiko Devaux and Kelly-Marie Murphy, and more as it embarks on a tour to South Korea and Japan – two countries already familiar with the Ottawa ensemble.
The highest viewership for the NAC Orchestra‘s concert stream on medici.tv from January featuring violinist Randall Goosby came from South Korea. And a 2023 performance with Japanese concert pianist Nobu is the orchestra’s most-watched YouTube video.
The tour will also mark a major moment for cultural bond-building in Asia. The orchestra will celebrate the year of jazz great Peterson’s 100th birthday with interpretations of his work at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan – itself a global cultural meeting point – while its Seoul concert on May 31 is a closing event in a “year of cultural exchanges” between South Korea and Canada.
The shared experience of creativity, music director Alexander Shelley says, is “the only reason that art has value across time and cultures” – because, he says, its universality helps people “investigate and explore the feelings and urges that we all have.”
The NAC is playing a major role in Canada’s efforts at the Osaka expo, curating the country’s cultural program across its six-month run, featuring artists such as Jeremy Dutcher, Pierre Lapointe and Dominique Fils-Aimé.
The Peterson celebration at the expo on June 6 will include a performance of the civil-rights anthem Hymn to Freedom, arranged by Mike Downes and orchestrated by Chris LaRosa, and the world premiere of a new commissioned arrangement by Downes of Peterson’s Trail of Dreams Suite.
That work is a tribute to Canada that Peterson debuted with the French conductor and arranger Michel Legrand at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall in 2000, with a 24-piece string orchestra, as part of a turn-of-the-millennium series of new commissions called Music Canada Musique 2000.
With the Hungarian-Canadian pianist Robi Botos leading the Oscar Peterson Centennial Quartet for the occasion, “this is going to be a different thing,” Shelley says, adding that quartet member Downes has “let the orchestra open up” at different points than the original arrangement. The result, “done with care and discretion and taste,” provides “a different perspective” on Trail of Dreams Suite, says Shelley, who is set to depart the NAC Orchestra next year after 11 seasons.
The tribute will also feature Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko and a youth choir featuring performers from El Sistema Japan’s Tokyo Children’s Ensemble, OrKidstra and Sistema New Brunswick.
Prior to Japan, the NAC Orchestra will perform in Busan, Gumi and Seoul in South Korea from May 29 to May 31, joined by Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son. The performances will include works by Strauss, Ravel and Beethoven, as well as Murphy‘s Dark Nights, Bright Stars, Vast Universe – an NAC Orchestra commission that is billed as a tribute to 19th-century astronomer Williamina Fleming as part of the organization’s Strauss Reimagined Series.
The Japanese tour will run from June 3 to June 7 and feature performances in Toyko, Osaka and Tsu, featuring the international premiere of Devaux’s Listening Underwater as well as works by Rachmaninoff and Beethoven.
