Last month was perhaps the busiest Vancouver has ever experienced, at least in terms of contemporary music, and that brought with it certain hard choices. Should one see the Kronos Quartet premiere a new work by Philip Glass, for example, or catch the last night of Vancouver New Music’s 40th-anniversary celebrations? Or would one’s time be better spent at the Hard Rubber Orchestra’s tribute to veteran composer Kenny Wheeler?

We’re not kidding: those were just a few of the choices available to listeners on October 19 alone. This month is similarly busy, but it’s going to be a little kinder on the schedule, thanks to a groundbreaking collaboration between Redshift Music and Vancouver New Music. When Redshift’s artistic director, Jordan Nobles, got wind that VNM had a show planned for the day before his multi-ensemble Chambercon event, he jumped on the phone to his counterpart, Giorgio
Magnanensi, with a radical suggestion: why not join forces?

Consider it a done deal—and a deal for the concertgoer, too. The revamped Chambercon is essentially two concerts in one, with small ensembles Duo Verdejo, Cordei, NOVO Ensemble, and the Ethos Collective playing short sets, after which many of their members will combine for three large-ensemble scores and then join forces with Magnanensi’s Vancouver Electronic Ensemble to present a survey of new directions in the local avant-garde.

“For me, this event has a huge community-building aspect, far beyond the little concerts that we’re doing here and there with our own ensembles,” says Ethos Collective percussionist Katie Rife, whose band is effectively the bridge between the program’s two halves. She and her colleagues worked with Magnanensi to pick highlights from VNM’s past, including Rudolf Komorous’s Slow Rant Boogie and Barbara Pentland’s Trance, but they’re also going to perform a Redshift-supported commission, rising-star composer Ava Grayson’s Mandala.

That title seems singularly appropriate, given that a mandala is made up of concentric circles of connection. Networking is a big part of being a new-music performer in Vancouver—which, as Cordei violinist Janna Sailor explains, is very much a grassroots, DIY affair.

“We wanted to do something that was different from our usual art day jobs of working in orchestras and things like that,” she says of her unconventional duo with harpist Albertina Chan. “And perhaps that’s a pervading sentiment among young musicians here in Vancouver. The other thing is that Vancouver has a very entrepreneurial spirit. There’s a lot of independent thought and support for independent projects, and so there’s support for young groups.”

A quick look at the Chambercon program illustrates the interwoven nature of the local scene. Duo Verdejo pairs guitarist Adrian Verdejo with violist Marcus Takizawa, a member of both the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the recently revived Little Chamber Music Series That Could’s in-house string trio. Cordei’s set includes By Backward Steps, by the Turning Point Ensemble’s co–artistic director Owen Underhill. The aforementioned Hard Rubber Orchestra’s John Korsrud and Hugh Fraser will lead a “conduction” that, like Ethos’s portion of the event, involves both written and improvised music. Magnanensi’s VNM Panorama features some of Vancouver’s best young chamber musicians and some of its most radical electronic experimentalists.

“I love that collective idea that if we all band together we can make something bigger happen,” says Nobles, who notes that recent growth in the number of innovative musicians has been matched by a comparable rise in curious listeners.

“As the programming gets more adventurous, it gets more accessible, I think,” he adds, noting that current directions in contemporary music are more audience-friendly than those typical 20 years ago. “The stigma of crazy, difficult new music is going away, and the audience is coming back.”