For March 10–12, VSO Music Director Otto Tausk has programmed Igor Stravinsky’s grand shocker Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), plus new works by Vancouver-based composers. Rodney Sharman, the Symphony’s first composer-in-residence, returns with After Schumann, a work which should complement Robert Schumann’s lovely Spring Symphony. Also on the program is Bloom by Rita Ueda, featuring Miyama McQueen-Tokita on koto. Just a few days later, new music enthusiasts obtain a chance to sample works by Missy Mazzoli and Zosha Di Castri at The Annex.

The opportunity to compare today’s new with yesterday’s is nearly irresistible. Zosha Di Castri hails Alberta but presently lives in New York, she's currently Francis Goelet Helper Prof of Music at Columbia University. American composer Missy Mazzoli presently has a Canadian connection as the Bragg Artist-in-Residence at New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University. She's a string of impressive past residencies at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera, and the Albany Symphony.

Article content Three of Mazzoli’s works — In Spite of All This, Ecstatic Science, and Violent, Violent Sea — will be performed by a cadre of VSO musicians, together with two works by Di Castri, TIMET.–I.–M.(TIME)–E (TIME-TIME-TIME) and Phonotopographie. VSO past associate conductor Andrew Crust, currently music director of the Lima Symphony Orchestra in Ohio, leads the celebration.