It just occurred to me that I forgot to do this monthly roundup at the end of December. I must have been distracted by something.
Early Music Vancouver aims to make Handel’s beloved Messiah feel both fresh and familiar
(Stir, December 3, 2025)
SINCE ITS FIRST PUBLIC performance in Dublin in 1742, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah has never fallen out of favour with audiences, even as its presentation has been changed to suit the tastes of the times.
In the Victoria era, fashion dictated massively scaled-up renditions of the beloved oratorio. In 1857, for example, London’s Crystal Palace hosted what was billed as the “Great Handel Festival”, complete with a performance of Messiah by a chorus of 2,000 singers and an orchestra of 500.
Not everyone, however, was a fan of this supersized Handel. Bernard Shaw was among the detractors, writing: “Why, instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness of a Handel Festival does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance of the Messiah in St James’s Hall with a chorus of twenty capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die.”
Richmond mayor hits the right notes at Vancouver Sunshine Lions Club charity concert
(Pancouver, December 8, 2025)
It isn’t every day that you get the opportunity to see a sitting mayor take to the stage and give a musical performance in front of a paying audience. That’s exactly what happened at Richmond’s Fraserview Church on December 7, when Malcolm Brodie provided piano accompaniment for vocalist May Ho and violinist Kan Chen.
Not by himself, mind you, but with the backing of the Vancouver Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. Brodie’s performance of two songs with the ensemble was the centrepiece of the Gentai Charity Concert. Organized by the Vancouver Sunshine Lions Club, the event raised $20,288 for the Richmond Community Foundation (which administers more than a dozen scholarships for secondary-school grads) and it also marked the Sunshine Lions’ 10th anniversary.
The two songs that featured Richmond’s mayor might not be very well-known outside of the Chinese community, but each is significant in its own way...
Vancouver Cantata Singers bridge generations with Christmas Reprise concerts
(Stir, December 9, 2025)
PUT IT DOWN TO genetics, credit the influence of growing up among musicians, or simply call it destiny; whatever the case, Sophia Colpitts was going to end up involved in music one way or another.
“My mom was an elementary-school music teacher and my dad still is, and they both play many instruments, so I grew up doing piano and I eventually started singing in choir when I was 11 years old,” says Colpitts, now in Grade 12. “And then I started writing choral music.”
Choral music certainly seems like the natural choice for the budding composer. One might even say it’s in her blood. Her grandfather, Doug Colpitts, has been a member of the Vancouver Cantata Singers since 1976. Sophia got her own start with the Vancouver Youth Choir, of which she is still a member, and she began composing her own choral works in 2022.
“The first piece I ever wrote was because of the Vancouver Chamber Choir’s Young Composers’ Competition,” she tells Stir in a telephone interview. “I just thought it would be interesting to enter, and so I did. And for that one, I won an honourable mention in the competition.”
Clearly, this is a young woman who takes music very seriously. Most of the time…
How SFU’s Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum was designed to be about more than just art
(Montecristo, Winter 2025 issue)
In Siamak Hariri’s view, every major project needs three key figures in order to come to fruition. A founding partner of the Toronto-based Hariri Pontarini Architects, he identifies the members of this holy trinity as the Champion, the Visionary, and the Captain. And in the case of the recently opened Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum at Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby Mountain campus, the architect says he knows exactly who filled each of those roles.
The Visionary, Hariri says, was Joy Johnson, SFU’s president and vice-chancellor, whose unswerving support ensured that the 12,100-square-foot, $26.3-million facility was built—and on a prime piece of real estate, no less, with an entrance adjacent to the campus’s main bus exchange. “She put this at the gateway of the entire university, and you have to acknowledge that that’s a daring act,” he insists. “She gave us enough land to spread out.”
The Captain, the architect continues, was Kimberly Phillips, director of SFU Galleries, who steered the Good Ship Gibson through occasionally stormy waters. And the Champion? That was Marianne Gibson, who was determined the new museum would be what Hariri calls “a love letter” to her late husband, Edward Gibson…
John Lucas 