Vancouver New Music's 2025-26 season celebrates the transformative power of sound with an inspiring lineup of international, Canadian, and local artists.

The season opens with soundscape artist Yota Kobayashi's Shiki & Kū (Sep 13-28), a collaborative immersive installation presented in partnership with VIVO Media Arts Centre, Formscape Arts and IM4 Media Lab, followed by this year's VNM Festival, Whispered Folds (Oct 16-18), featuring eight groundbreaking artists exploring themes of intimacy, boundaries, and borders. As part of the VNM Festival, and in partnership with Vancouver Public Library, Murmurs of Memory (Oct 16-18), a mutli-channel audio installation, will be presented in front of the Central Library’s Grand Staircase.

Throughout the year, our On Curation Mentorship Project showcases emerging curatorial voices presenting innovative artists and concepts. Curators Anju Singh, Freya Zinovieff, and Terri Hron have worked with their respective mentors Raven Chacon, Laura Netz, and Peter Hatch to each program an event: AO Roberts’ sculptural sound installation, Zero Input Enclosure Movement (ZIEM) (Feb 14); Listening as Activism (Apr 11), a roundtable discussion and performance exploring how deep listening can be a form of resistance and social engagement; and A Voynich Manifesto (May 9), an immersive, collaborative audiovisual performance that takes inspiration from a mysterious medieval manuscript.

International highlights of this season include the Vancouver debut of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist ganavya (Nov 18), co-presented with Chan Centre in collaboration with Indian Summer Festival, as well as the BC premiere of the drum and dance powerhouse performance, Manifesto (Apr 16-18), by award-winning Stephanie Lake Company, co-presented with DanceHouse. Join us for a season that challenges and expands our understanding of sound, music, and performance.