03/21/2025
WE ARE CANADIAN!!!!
To all our loyal patrons and advertisers/sponsors we, the Parkdale Orchestra, wish to thank you for your continued support. Parkdale Orchestra is Ottawa’s oldest community orchestra; we just passed our 79-year mark. We have a long history of featuring Canadian artists, both seasoned professional musicians as well as rising stars, and students. And both Maestro John Kraus, our Music Director, and Angus Armstrong, our former Music Director champion/ed and have commissioned works of Canadian composers; Dolores Claman, Violet Archer, Frank Horvat, Christine Donkin, Lora Bidner, Brianna Dai, Elizabeth Raum, and Godfrey Rideout to name a few. Our 2023-24 season opened with a concert featuring renowned Canadian soprano, Susan Elizabeth Brown and, in the spring, we wowed our audience with an evening of opera arias featuring three Canadian soloists. We also performed excerpts from a new Canadian opera, ‘The Lionheart’ - to be premiered in the Fall of 2025 with members of the Parkdale Orchestra in the pit! This season we opened with the premiere of two works by Ottawa composers, Lora Bidner, ‘The Two Owls’ and Brianna Dai’s, ‘The Conquest; Reverberations of Resilience’. In February 2025, Canadian violinist and composer, Victoria Yeh, joined us on stage, and we premiered her work, ‘Winter in Canada.’ Closing our season we will perform Harold Kaufmann’s, ‘Sketches of the Madawaska.’ Can you get more Canadian than that!! We are able to support these Canadian artists/composers because of you – so thank you. Elbows up Canada!!!!
