The National Arts Centre Orchestra is to embark on a monumental tour this spring, including its debut in South Korea and a return to Japan for the first time in 40 years.
The orchestra has performed in every Canadian province and territory, but it is also known as one of the most accessible and collaborative orchestras in the world. This year’s overseas trip will mark the orchestra’s 99th since it was founded 56 years ago.
“This orchestra, since its inception back in 1969 — which was created when the building was created — has been a touring orchestra,” said Nelson McDougall, the NAC’s orchestral managing director.
Led by music director Alexander Shelley, the orchestra leaves Ottawa for its Asian tour on May 25 and returns home June 8. The orchestra will perform in six cities in South Korea and Japan. Highlights include performances at the Seoul Arts Centre in South Korea on May 31 and at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan on June 6.
Yosuke Kawasaki, the Orchestra’s concertmaster, says he’s excited about heading out on tour. He recounted shorter trips to Toronto and New York in recent years, but this is the first extended tour since before the COVID-19 global pandemic was declared in March 2020.
“For the musicians, it’s a real morale booster,” said Kawasaki. “When we’re actually on tour, it’s a great team-building exercise.”
Violinist Jessy Kim, a new member of the orchestra, said she’s excited to return home to South Korea after 12 years. It’s her first time going back since high school and her first time performing in both countries.
“Our tour to Korea and Japan is an opportunity for the members of this orchestra to play a vital role for Canada as cultural ambassadors, something they excel at.”
— Nelson McDougall, NAC orchestral manager
When the orchestra performs in Seoul on May 31, it will serve as a kind of grand finalé of the Korea-Canada Year of Cultural Exchanges.
“We’ve had Korean artists on our stage to share Korean culture with our audiences here and we’ll do the same in Korea and Japan,” said McDougall.
While in Japan, a key moment will occur when the orchestra performs at Expo, the world’s fair hosted this year by Osaka. There, NACO will celebrate the 100th birthday of Oscar Peterson, the famed Canadian jazz musician who is immortalized in a downtown Ottawa statue outside the NAC along Elgin Street.
Collaborating with the Oscar Peterson Centennial Quartet, the orchestra will perform a newly commissioned arrangement of Peterson’s Trail of Dreams — a suite of 12 compositions recorded in 2000 as a tribute to Canada.
Peterson, who was born in 1925 and died in 2007 at age 82, was one of the most prolific jazz pianists of all time. He earned eight Grammy Awards as well as a recording industry Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Centennial Quartet celebrates his life and will tour internationally throughout 2025, featuring music from Peterson’s nearly seven-decade-long career.
“It’s about cultural exchange, community engagement with youth and families, and supporting the next generation of professional artists,” Alexander Shelley said in a media release about the event.
Organizations including Ottawa’s OrKidstra, Sistema New Brunswick, Friends of El Sistema Japan and Orchestra of Dream (El Sistema Korea) are also collaborating with the NAC Orchestra to give performances, masterclasses and workshops as part of the cultural exchange between Canada, South Korea and Japan.
“This isn’t about them becoming professional musicians,” McDougall said of the youth involvement in the tour. “They’ll be talking about this for the rest of their lives — that time that they got to travel with Canada’s national orchestra to engage with kids on the other side of the world.”
The NAC Orchestra tour is designed to “foster meaningful and lasting connections” and highlighted the importance of sharing arts and culture across borders.
“Under Shelley’s leadership, NACO has proudly embraced its national mandate to share music-making with as many people as possible, including supporting the next generation of Canadian composers by commissioning new works and bringing them to the global stage,” NACO stated in a news release about the tour.
As part of the tour, the orchestra will also host the international premiere of two original works from Canadian composers Kelly-Marie Murphy, who hails from Ottawa, and Keiko Devaux.
Murphy and Devaux are both accomplished composers. Murphy has won national and international awards for her music, and has been described as “imaginative and expressive” by the National Post and “Bartok on steroids” by the Birmingham News.
Devaux has also won numerous awards for her music, which is described as a blur “between traditional tonal sounds and more electroacoustic inspired ‘noise’ gesture.”
This tour also marks the 10th anniversary of Shelley as NACO’s music director.
The orchestra will be accompanied by star pianists Yeol Eum Son while in South Korea and Olga Scheps in Japan.
McDougall said he’s proud of the orchestra’s concert repertoire, noting that it will shine a spotlight on Canadian musicians and composers, even those who are part of NACO’s mentorship program.
A send-off concert will be performed at the NAC’s Southam Hall on May 20.
