Flutist Paolo Bortolussi is a soloist, chamber artist and new music pioneer. Raised in Halifax, NS, he has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across Canada, the US and abroad. A specialist in contemporary music, Bortolussi is the flutist and co-director of the Nu:BC Collective, a new music and multimedia arts ensemble in residence at UBC. To date he has premiered over one hundred and fifty solo and chamber works. In 2016, Bortolussi released his first solo album, Israfel – music for flute and electronics, on the Redshift label, which includes works by Keith Hamel, Larry Lake, John Oliver and Kaija Saariaho. Currently principal flutist with the Vancouver Island Symphony, Bortolussi has appeared as soloist with the VIS as well as the Albany (NY) Symphony and the Turning Point Ensemble, and has performed with the Aventa Ensemble, the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra, as well as the Vancouver and Victoria Symphony Orchestras. Bortolussi is on the music faculty of the University of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Trinity Western University. He holds a BMus in performance from the University of Ottawa as well as Masters and Doctoral degrees from Indiana University. He is currently director of the UBC Contemporary Players.
Directed by Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students from the School of Music focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors.
We are pleased to welcome back the UBC Contemporary Players to the Belkin for a concert inspired by the current exhibitions That Directionless Light of the Future: Rediscovering Russell FitzGerald and An Opulence of Squander. Led by Director Paolo Bortolussi, this graduate and undergraduate student ensemble from the UBC School of Music will animate the gallery for an afternoon program celebrating themes from the exhibitions.
All are welcome and admission is free.
Flutist Paolo Bortolussi is a soloist, chamber artist and new music pioneer. Raised in Halifax, NS, he has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across Canada, the US and abroad. A specialist in contemporary music, Bortolussi is the flutist and co-director of the Nu:BC Collective, a new music and multimedia arts ensemble in residence at UBC. To date he has premiered over one hundred and fifty solo and chamber works. In 2016, Bortolussi released his first solo album, Israfel – music for flute and electronics, on the Redshift label, which includes works by Keith Hamel, Larry Lake, John Oliver and Kaija Saariaho. Currently principal flutist with the Vancouver Island Symphony, Bortolussi has appeared as soloist with the VIS as well as the Albany (NY) Symphony and the Turning Point Ensemble, and has performed with the Aventa Ensemble, the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra, as well as the Vancouver and Victoria Symphony Orchestras. Bortolussi is on the music faculty of the University of British Columbia, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Trinity Western University. He holds a BMus in performance from the University of Ottawa as well as Masters and Doctoral degrees from Indiana University. He is currently director of the UBC Contemporary Players.
Directed by Paolo Bortolussi, the UBC Contemporary Players ensemble includes graduate and undergraduate students from the School of Music focusing on music and performance of our time. Programs blend masterworks by internationally acclaimed composers with world premieres of works written expressly for the ensemble by UBC composition majors.
Weiyi Chang's curatorial research into ecological methodologies in contemporary art inform her exhibition An Opulence of Squander. The group exhibition features artworks from the Belkin's collection and beyond that critique the imperative for growth at all costs, growth that has contributed to our collective ecological and social conundrum.
[more]Jon Davies's work as a writer and curator is grounded in contemporary art, cinema and queer studies. His exhibition That Directionless Light of the Future features rarely seen works by American artist and writer Russell FitzGerald (1932-78) and his contemporaries, largely from the Bay Area, to explore how secret and subcultural knowledge complicates archiving and transmission.
[more]Join us for an afternoon symposium responding to That Directionless Light of the Future: Rediscovering Russell FitzGerald, an exhibition which grapples with a difficult and overlooked figure, exploring how the most idiosyncratic artists can crack open familiar historical narratives.
[more]Join us for an online monthly three-part conversation series hosted by curator Weiyi Chang. In each session she will engage an artist or scholar about their work in the context of one of the provocations running through the exhibition An Opulence of Squander.
[more]Curated by Weiyi Chang, An Opulence of Squander brings together works from the Belkin’s collection and archive with artists that consider concepts of surplus and excess to question the dual ascription of artistic work as a form of both luxury and waste. This reading room offers resources relating to the themes and artists present in this exhibition.
[more]Curated by Jon Davies, That Directionless Light of the Future: Rediscovering Russell FitzGerald features rarely seen works by American artist and writer Russell FitzGerald (1932-78) and his contemporaries, largely from the Bay Area, to explore how secret and subcultural knowledge complicates archiving and transmission. This reading room offers resources relating to the themes and artists present in this exhibition.
[more]Kelly Wood's Half Empty Bag and White Garbage (both 1997) are part of the exhibition An Opulence of Squander curated by Weiyi Chang at the Belkin, which considers our collective responsibilities as caretakers of artworks and as shapers of reconsidered and increasingly urgent narratives; more of Kelly Wood's work can be seen here.
[more]As part of the exhibition An Opulence of Squander, Soft Turns' ematerial (2019) plays on the Outdoor Screen from 9 am to 9 pm daily.
[more]The exhibition of Kelly Wood’s The Continuous Garbage Project marks the completion of a long project. For five years, since Vancouver’s garbage workers’ strike in spring 1998 and concluding the week before the opening of this exhibition in 2003, Wood photographed her own garbage. The waste from Wood’s Vancouver home was neatly packaged and photographed against a studio backdrop, while the waste documented on her travels shows the objects wrapped or unwrapped in their immediate surroundings.
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