Join in for The Rusquartet presented by Music on Main at Heritage Hall on Monday. A celebration to honour composer Louis Andriessen’s (Netherlands) 70th birthday! A festival celebrating the music and ideas of Louis Andriessen. On the eve of his 70th birthday, Louis Andriessen – one of today’s most influential, important and exciting composers – will be celebrated throughout Vancouver in a far-reaching festival running from April 3 to April 8, 2009. 
With this Vancouver-based festival. Music on Main, Hard Rubber Orchestra and Vancouver New Music launch the international celebrations of Andriessen’s 70th birthday, celebrations that continue at Amsterdam’s Holland Festival in June.
Louis Andriessen will be in attendance throughout the festival, and will be featured in lectures, talks, composition masterclasses and performances.
Andriessen’s music spans many a genre, takes the featherweight as seriously as the profound, an is unmodernistically generous in the way it acknowledges it’s kinship to other musical influences, whether that ‘other’ be Stravinsky or Charlie Parker, Bach or Ives, boogie-woogie or rap. His iconoclastic approach to instrumentation paved the way for many of today’s indie bands. It is this open-mindedness, combined with strict discipline, which has made Andriessen a much sought-after teacher and a major influence on a generation of composers including Steve Martland, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Cornelis de Bondt and numerous leading Canadian composers including Rodney Sharman, Michael Oesterle, John Korsrud, Allison Cameron and Paul Steenhuisen.
From April 3 to April 8, 2009, Music on Main, Hard Rubber Orchestra and Vancouver New Music present concerts of Andriessen’s music at diverse venues throughout Vancouver. Highlights of the programming include: La Passione for orchestra, solo voice, and violin; M is for Man, Music, Mozart for large ensemble and singer with a film by Peter Greenaway; a marathon concert of chamber music, including Workers Union; recent works from composers influenced by Andriessen; films by Peter Greenaway and Hal Hartley; and an improv cabaret with the composer himself.
In addition to featuring Vancouver’s top musicians, the festival will play host to the celebrated Italian singer Cristina Zavolloni – for whom Andriessen has written the majority of his recent vocal works – and the Amsterdam-based American violinist Monica Germino.
Heritage Hall
3102 Main Street, Vancouver
April 6, 2009, Monday 8:00 PM
For more information Call at 604-879-4816 or E-mail at mgilmour@heritagehall.bc.ca