Kindred Spirits Orchestra

The Kindred Spirits Orchestra has performed since 2009, to great acclaim, sold-out audiences, and standing ovations at the legendary CBC Glenn Gould Studio in downtown Toronto. The Kindred Spirits Orchestra also offers a 6-concert subscription series at the Flato Markham Theatre, in addition to 3 community-outreach and 2 educational concerts. Led by the charismatic Maestro Kristian Alexander, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra is enjoying enormous popularity among York Region’s residents and continues to attract avid audiences across the Greater Toronto Area.

The Kindred Spirits Orchestra performs a wide range of compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and many others. Ardent supporter of contemporary music, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra created, also in 2011, Markham Contemporary Music Festival, an annual event that has brought to life great pieces of the 20th century by Lutoslavsky, Stravisnky, Philip Glass, Honegger as well as by illustrious Canadian composers such as Garry Kulesha, Brian Current, Larysa Kuzmenko, Daniel Friedman, Kevin Lau, Constantine Caravassilis and James Campbell. During the past few years alone, the orchestra has regularly worked with internationally renowned soloists such as pianists André Laplante, Christina Quilico and James Parker, harpist Ann Hobson Pilot, violinists Jacques Israelievitch, Joelle Kee and Marc Djokic, cellist Rachel Mercer, soprano Rebecca Whelan, and tenor Keith Klassen, among many others. In 2014, the KSO has also given the Canadian première of John Williams’ fame piece “On Willows and Birches” as well as the world première of James Campbell’s Concerto for Harp and Orchestra.

In 2013 and 2015, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra was presented Awards from the Government of Canada for the “extraordinary work of the Kindred Spirits Orchestra promoting Canadian music and Canadian composers in the community as well as for the orchestra’s community outreach and educational programs”. In 2016, the Government of Ontario awarded 9 members of the KSO for their contribution to the development of arts and culture in the community. In 2017, the Kindred Spirits Orchestra gave a sold-out performance at the 3,200-seat Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in downtown Toronto during the first international concert-tribute to the Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman.