The Orchestre de l’Agora will perform a live concert, to be broadcast on social networks as well as on its website. The Orchestre will also release 50 in-house tickets to medical support workers and other healthcare professionals for this concert at the Maison symphonique on Sunday, July 26 at 3 p.m. Healthcare workers have stepped up as true heroes and heroines of this province over the past three months. We wish to offer them a moment of respite and tranquility, show them our gratitude and formally thank them. There is strong evidence that this cultural and social gesture will make the Orchestre de l’Agora the first North American orchestra to give a symphonic concert for a live audience since mandatory shutdown of concerts since March 2020. Funds raised from this concert will also go to support the Hero Project initiative, which offers meals to all health workers at the Jewish General Hospital, one of the main hospitals in Montreal treating patients with COVID-19. The Orchestre de l’Agora has committed to donating all its profits from this concert’s ticket sales to this initiative, which has already raised $150,000 and a donation from Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price. To spectators tuning in from their home or care facility, we wish to send a message of hope in the current health crisis that affects so many lives.

Each of the works chosen for this concert by conductor and Artistic Director Nicolas Ellis bears a distinct connection with the present-day context. Since 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, it seems vital to perform   a work by this composer which conveys the spirit of solidarity, hope, and triumph: the Egmont Overture. The Orchestra will also perform Montreal-based German composer Matthias Maute’s Noncerto Vieux Montréal RR10, a tribute to

Montreal’s rich culture, beauty, and diversity, and which envisions the city as a welcoming haven. The pandemic has also revealed more convincingly than ever, the importance of consuming local; musically, this translates to featuring local composers. To complete the program, a performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante will prove a historic first, bringing together on the same stage OSM Concertmaster Andrew Wan and Orchestre Métropolitain Concertmaster Yukari Cousineau. Written originally for violin and viola, this work will showcase two “captains” of major Montreal symphonic institutions. For the occasion, Yukari Cousineau will take on the viola part. This encounter is not only symbolic for the classical music community; it is a direct tributary and a message of mutual aid, solidarity and collaboration, crucial elements of the revival of cultural, social and other activities in the months to come.

After more than three months of public musical silence due to the pandemic, the Orchestre de l’Agora and its conductor Nicolas Ellis are thrilled to be back in the heat of the action, to reconvene with their colleagues and to do the work they were trained to do: make live music. Reconnecting with their audience in a concert is a unique opportunity for these musicians to reclaim the cultural space left vacant in the past months. The Orchestra returns to the concert stage to offer tranquility to listeners amid the exceptionally turbulent present-day circumstances. It has chosen to make this concert accessible in person primarily to healthcare workers, who experience such turbulence from the front lines.

 

Details concert / registration healthcare workers : orchestreagora.com/en/season-2019-2020/concert-solidaire