PEI Symphony Orchestra Announces 2025–26 Season: Nouveau
To the musicians, patrons, and supporters of the PEISO,
What a year the 2024/25 season was! A season of artistic growth, evolution, and the beginning of my collaboration with all of you.
The upcoming season is one of intense contrast, joined to each other through organic links that use nature and humanism, informed by the art nouveau aesthetic that sought to break down the barrier between applied and fine arts. At its core, art nouveau was designed to bring beauty into the everyday, asking architects, painters, musicians, and professionals to consider not just what and how, but why. It was the idea that beauty can serve a purpose beyond itself. This season, Nouveau, embodies this through music. It leads the ensemble down a bold path of artistic intent; one that considers how old music can inspire the future, and new music can remind us of our roots.
It is a season that asks us to consider our platform during a time of societal change; what we are playing, who it is for, and why. How can orchestral music ask the hard questions, and give insights as to the answers at the same time? Is this music merely entertainment, or can it tell stories, as juxtaposed as they may be, which serve a function in the everyday?
I can promise you, Nouveau will be unforgettable. I’m so excited to share it with you this year.
Jaelem Bhate, PEISO Music Director
2025–26 PEISO Island Series
October 26, 2025 – Re(new)al
Opening the 58th season of the PEISO is a program that brings new meaning and depth to the idea of renewal, pairing works with over 300 years between them. Anchored by Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al for percussion quartet and orchestra—featuring PEISO percussionists Michael Gallant, Branden Kelly, Ryan Drew and Shawn Doiron as soloists—the concert explores elemental energy through sound, from vibrating crystal glasses to bowing vibraphones. Bach’s legendary Toccata and Fugue in D minor appears in a vivid orchestration by Stokowski, while Jocelyn Morlock’s bird-inspired Oiseaux bleus et sauvages and Respighi’s cinematic Pines of Rome round out this dynamic, nature-infused program.
November 23, 2025 – Bloom with Arthur Arnold, guest conductor
Guest conductor Arthur Arnold makes his long-awaited PEISO debut in a program of growth and blossoming. After many years struggling to write his first symphony, overwhelmed and paralyzed by the shadow of Beethoven, Johannes Brahms produced his second symphony as if it was already composed. Known for its organic and pastoral themes, his second symphony is a story of a composer in full bloom, overcoming personal struggle in the name of their art. The orchestra welcomes back mezzo soprano Hannah O’Donnell as soloist in Berlioz’s Les nuites d’éte (Summer Nights), preceded by Zoltán Kodály’s street music inspired Dances of Galanta.
March 15, 2026 – Reclaimed
Reclaimed speaks to home, and what happens when home leaves us. The PEISO is thrilled to welcome Cris Derksen, a Juno-nominated Indigenous cellist and composer, who is internationally renowned for their genre-defying music that bridges the traditional and contemporary. This moving program includes Derksen’s own works including Round Dance, Parkdale and Controlled Burn. Paired with Nat Bartsch’s introspective Hope and Margaret Bonds’ Montgomery Variations, which responds to the American civil rights movement, the program also features Smetana’s Má Vlast, a passionate tribute to national identity and personal belonging.
April 12, 2026 – Blue
The season closes with a program of unbridled joy, centered in the rhythms and character of jazz, pop, and gospel music. Tracing a remarkable musical evolution from the late 19th to the 20th century, Blue connects Ravel’s mesmerizing Bolero to Omar Thomas’ exuberant 2018 work Come Sunday, celebrating new sounds and cultural voices in classical music. PEI’s own Magdalena von Eccher performs Debussy’s seldom-heard Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, while Gershwin’s An American in Paris—inspired by Ravel and reimagined here as perhaps a Canadian in Paris—anchors the concert with the vibrant, cosmopolitan energy of 1920s Paris.
We’re excited to invite our 2024/25 subscribers to renew their PEI Symphony Orchestra subscription for the upcoming 2025/26 season during our early-bird period: May 24 – June 16, 2025.
As a returning subscriber, you will have the exclusive opportunity to reserve the same seat you enjoyed last season, or select a new one from any seats not being held for fellow renewing subscribers.
The subscription price for the 2025/26 season is $180 + HST and box office fees ($231 all-in, or $127.50 for students).
Call or visit the Confederation Centre Box Office to purchase a season subscription. The Box Office is open on Mondays to Saturdays from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM and can be reached at 1-902-566-1267 / 1-800-565-0278.
For more information about the 2025-26 season visit the PEISO website at www.peisymphony.com
