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The Happenstancers: Always Darkest … Dawn Always

The Happenstancers: Always Darkest … Dawn Always
The Happenstancers Always Darkest Dawn Always photo
January 16, 2026 | 8:00 PM
  • Starting at: $21.00
  • Venue: Temerty Theatre
  • Series: 21C Music, Loyalty Program
  • Genre: Classical, New Music
  • Presenter: The Royal Conservatory

Performed by “Toronto’s best young chamber musicians” (Bachtrack), this unique program titled Always Darkest … Dawn Always charts a course across a single night, framing the emotional apotheosis within Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, and its depiction of the tension between and reconciliation of two lovers. This program juxtaposes three settings of Josquin de Prez’s Renaissance song Mille Regretz (1000 Regrets) with contemporary chamber works, beginning at precisely sunset in Toronto and reimagining each work as a time and corresponding emotional state over the course of the night, concluding with dawn and the lovers’ renewal.

Program:

Kaija Saariaho: Oi Kuu (To the Moon) 
Josquin de Prez: Mille Regretz  

Kaija Saariaho: From the Grammar of Dreams     
Nicolas Gombert (after Josquin de Prez): Mille Regretz 
Du Yun: Dreams-Bend    

Katharine Petkovski: Above (Canadian premiere) 
Ana Sokolović: Excerpts from Dawn Always Begins in the Bones  
Arnold Schoenberg: Verklarte Nacht  
Cristobal de Morales (after de Prez): Missa de Mille Regretz: Agnus Dei    
Philip Glass: “Knee Play 5” from Einstein on the Beach
 

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