Paolo Bortolussi, flute & Corey Hamm, piano – Sunday, May 25, 2025 – 2:30pm

This concert will showcase romantic and virtuosic flute and piano masterworks from the past century such as Bohuslav Martinu’s charming and rhythmic sonata for flute and piano and a piece by Czech compatriot Erwin Schulhoff, whose career was cut short in a German prison in 1942. The program will also feature a pair of lyrical and expressive works by BC composers Jocelyn Morlock and Dorothy Chang.

The concert will open with an informal conversation between LCMS’ Artistic Director Elizabeth Bergmann and the artists, followed by complimentary coffee, tea and refreshments before the performance. The performance will take place in the Rose Gellert Hall and will last approximately 60 min, with no intermission.

Commentary & Coffee – 2:30pm, Concert – 3:15pm

Subscribe to the Season and Save!

Concerts Café Classico Series
Single Tickets: Adult $25 / Senior $23 / Student $10
Flex Pass (4 concerts of your choice): Adult $90 | Senior $83
Season Subscription (6 concerts): Adult $128 | Senior $118| Student $59

Order Today!
To place an order, or if you have any questions, please call the Box Office at 604-534-2848. You can also purchase online at Eventbrite.

About Paolo Bortolussi, flute

Flutist Paolo Bortolussi is a soloist, chamber artist, and new music pioneer. Dedicated to championing music by living composers, he has premiered over 200 works for flute, including concerti written for him by Dorothy Chang, Jocelyn Morlock, Jian Ping Tang and Aaron Gervais. Paolo is co-artistic director of the Nu:BC Collective, a new music ensemble in residence at the University of British Columbia. Firmly established as one of the premier interpreters of contemporary music in Western Canada, Nu:BC has performed at festivals across Canada, the US and Asia, and has premiered works by many of Canada’s leading composers. Beyond Shadows, Nu:BC’s debut CD, as well as Paolo’s solo release Israfel have received multiple nominations at the Western Canadian Music Awards.

Paolo is principal flutist and New Music Advisor for the Vancouver Island Symphony where he is the driving force behind the Canadian Concerto Project, which has commissioned, premiered, and recorded five new concerti by Canadian composers for principal players of the orchestra. The album A Quinary includes the world premiere recording of Jocelyn Morlock’s flute concerto Ornithomancy, and was nominated for 4 Western Canadian Music Awards. Paolo was also the soloist for the premiere recording of Dorothy Chang’s flute concerto Flight on the Soaring Spirits CD with the UBC Symphony Orchestra. The recording of Flight earned Dorothy Chang a nomination for a Juno award for composition of the year and won the Western Canadian Award in the same category.

Raised in Halifax, Dr. Bortolussi is a graduate of the University of Ottawa and the Indiana University School of Music. He is instructor of flute, chamber music, and directs the Contemporary Players Ensemble at the University of British Columbia School of Music. Paolo and has presented masterclasses across North America as well as in Korea and Taiwan, and is in demand as a clinician and adjudicator.

About Corey Hamm, piano

Pianist Corey Hamm is establishing a unique musical profile performing widely in North America and in Asia as both a soloist and as a chamber musician. His CD of Frederic Rzewski’s hour-long solo piano epic The People United Will Never Be Defeated! won Spotify’s Best Classical Recording 2014, and Best Classical Recording at the 2014 Western Canadian Music Awards. Further recording plans include the complete works for piano by Henri Dutilleux, and a CD of solo works written for him by Canadian composers.

Corey Hamm has commissioned, premiered and recorded over 200 works by composers from all over the world. His most extensive collection of commissioned works includes over 60 pieces for PEP (Piano and Erhu Project). Some of these works are already released on two volumes of PEP CDs.

He has also commissioned dozens of works for The Nu:BC Collective and for Hammerhead Consort. As a founding member of Hammerhead Consort, he received the 1993 Sir Ernest Macmillan Memorial Foundation Chamber Music Award, and was winner of the 1992 National Chamber Music Competition.

In recent years, Corey Hamm has, recorded and toured one of the great piano works of the last decades, Frederic Rzewski’s monumental The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Redshift TK431).

Dr. Hamm is an award-winning Associate Professor of Piano at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is on the Piano Faculty of the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) at NEC in Boston. His beloved teachers include Lydia Artymiw, Marek Jablonski, Stéphane Lemelin, Ernesto Lejano, and Thelma Johannes O’Neill.