{"id":840285,"date":"2026-08-01T11:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T11:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840285\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T11:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T11:43:09","slug":"montreal-composer-ana-sokolovics-latest-work-draws-inspiration-from-her-adopted-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840285\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal composer Ana Sokolovic\u2019s latest work draws inspiration from her adopted city"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The world premiere of Ana Sokolovic\u2019s latest work, Montr\u00e9al cirque, comes Wednesday as part of a free outdoor concert at the city’s Mount Royal Park.Andr\u00e9 Parmentier\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Ana Sokolovic has an unassailable belief in the power of music. \u201cWe\u2019re in this period of human existence which has so many ugly things,\u201d the Montreal-based composer says. \u201cBut at the same time, we should be conscious about good things which are happening, especially in the artistic world.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sokolovic\u2019s latest work, Montr\u00e9al cirque, will have its world premiere on Wednesday, part of a free outdoor concert at Mount Royal Park with Orchestre M\u00e9tropolitain (OM) led by superstar conductor Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin. While OM\u2019s summer concerts are always much-anticipated events on Montreal\u2019s social calendar, this particular presentation is one thread in a larger tapestry of events stretching into 2027, all of them marking the park\u2019s 150th anniversary. Designed by American architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the park (opened in 1876) is one of the city\u2019s most popular outdoor destinations. Its sesquicentennial is being marked not only with music but via a myriad of happenings, including art walks, film nights, historical tours and a conference in early October exploring the area\u2019s Indigenous presence. <\/p>\n

The park is also where the Belgrade-born Sokolovic first visited as a newcomer to Canada. \u201cIt was probably my second day after I arrived in Montreal, in 1992,\u201c she recalls. \u201cFor me it was incredible to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Canada\u2019s most prolific and celebrated composers, the Juno Award-winning artist is perhaps best known for her 2011 a cappella opera Svadba \u2013 Wedding, a work weaving Balkan sounds within a narrative of wedding preparation. Performed over 50 times internationally (including at San Francisco Opera, Opera Philadelphia and Festival d\u2019Aix-en-Provence), the work won a Dora Mavor Moore Award in 2012 for Outstanding New Opera. Her works have been presented at a range of f\u00eated institutions and festivals, including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Venice Music Biennale, the Diaghilev Festival (Perm), Beijing Music Festival and the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World New Music Days, hosted by Vancouver in 2017. <\/p>\n

I learned to love opera again<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2022, she was awarded the first Canada Research Chair in opera creation at Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al, where Sokolovic is a professor of composition; she is also artistic director of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de musique contemporaine du Qu\u00e9bec. In a Q&A on the Universit\u00e9\u2019s website<\/a>, she pushes back at the notion that Canada isn\u2019t especially known as a land of opera: \u201cIt\u2019s just not true! […] We perform to sold-out houses. People are curious. And especially in Montreal, we have a unique concentration of artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

She credits her background, which includes training in ballet, with feeding her inspiration. The former Yugoslavia, she explains, was \u201cwhere people passed through and brought their food and their culture, like the French word \u2018rencontres\u2019 \u2013 meetings. Not only the Balkans but the whole Mediterranean culture is very much influenced by carnivalesque culture; I find this very much present in Montreal also.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Sokolovic pushes back at the notion that Canada isn\u2019t known as a land of opera.Raoul Manuel Schnell\/Supplied<\/p>\n

The premiere of Montr\u00e9al cirque comes amidst a year of important milestones for the composer, including the European premiere of her 2025 opera Clown(s) and the U.S. premiere of Concerto pour basson et sept cordes graves (2009). In mid-August You Can Die Properly Now (2024) will make its British premiere with soprano (and Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio member Emma Pennell) in Edinburgh, with Rafael Payare leading Orchestre symphonique de Montr\u00e9al. The work is dedicated to Indigenous children who were part of Canada\u2019s residential school system. \u201cMusic goes directly to the emotions,\u201d she says. If she had one thing she would tell her students, it\u2019s to be aware of \u201chow the music can connect the people in different circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

In choosing the title Montr\u00e9al cirque, Sokolovic was inspired by the physical shape of Mount Royal, and the lingering ideas within Clown(s). \u201cCircus is a place where things happen\u201d she says, \u201cor many things could happen. We laugh at clowns, because they do the things we don\u2019t want to do, or the things we are afraid of doing.\u201d Mount Royal Park reflects this aspect of possibility and play. \u201cThere\u2019s theatre pieces playing there at any given moment,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople are having barbecues, people are making love, people are watching sunset or sunrise; they are watching the river, going around, riding horses, interacting, meeting, arguing. Many things are happening; the piece reflects that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The premiere is part of a program that also includes another new work, R\u00eaveries by Quebec composer Guillaume Couture. Hosted by ambassador Fabiola Nyrva Aladin, the concert will feature a special performance by Canadian Inuk artist Elisapie and the Petits chanteurs du Mont-Royal. The work marks the first time Sokolovic and N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin will have worked together. <\/p>\n

In addition to being music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin is also artistic director and principal conductor of Orchestre M\u00e9tropolitain, and has worked with a number of famed classical institutions. Sokolovic recalls seeing the maestro conduct in his early days in Quebec, and has followed his meteoric rise in classical music ever since. \u201cI was proud of him,\u201d she says. \u201cHe is an amazing musician, but he\u2019s so approachable, a normal human being \u2013 and this is also part of being Canadian: being part of the community, connected with every single person in the audience. I don\u2019t know how many hundreds of thousands of people will be [at the concert], but I know he will connect with all of them.\u201d <\/p>\n

That sense of connection is, she explains, part of music\u2019s unique power. \u201cWhen somebody dies, music is there; when somebody celebrates, music is there; when somebody is working, music is there,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is the most abstract of all arts, and can make us smile or cry \u2013 or both, at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The world premiere of Ana Sokolovic\u2019s latest work, Montr\u00e9al cirque, comes Wednesday as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338,2922],"class_list":["post-840285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal","tag-noastack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}