Editor’s choice

Ready, set...

Local classical-music aficionados are going to get an early look at what the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra will sound like once music director Bramwell Tovey steps down at the end of this season. His replacement, Otto Tausk, is set to take the podium, and if this is a preview of what’s to come, we’re happy to say that it might just be more of the same. Tausk will lead soloist Vadim Gluzman through Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in C-sharp Minor, before tackling something a little less spiky in Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, along with the extroverted sweetness of Mikhail Glinka’s overture for his opera Ruslan and Ludmila. It’s business as usual, in short, and we’re glad of that.

Otto Tausk conducts the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum on Saturday and Monday (October 14 and 16).

High five

Five events you just can’t miss this week

DeAnne Smith

Laugh yourself silly as comedy’s funniest gender-queer hipster nerd skewers herself and the state of the planet.
October 12 to 14 at the Comedy MIX

Graham Clark’s Quiz Show

Crack comedians play contestants on this whacked-out live game show.
October 14 at the Fox Cabaret

Zhang Zuo

The Vancouver Recital Society brings us another rising piano star with passion to burn.
October 15 at the Vancouver Playhouse

1 Hour Photo

Moving storytelling, urgent history, and amazing miniature set pieces.
To October 15 at the Cultch

Turandot

A chance to hear “Nessun dorma” live in Vancouver Opera’s epic, Puccini-scaled production.
October 13, 15, 19, and 21 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre