Celebrated Canadian composer Alice Ping Yee Ho's newest concerto Pictures from an Imagined Exhibition, inspired by the works of Hong Kong ink master Wesley Tongson, and pianist-painter Christina Petrowska Quilico to premier at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto.
Pictures from an Imagined Exhibition (World Premiere)
Date: 16 May 2026 (Saturday), 18:00 (UTC -05:00)
Venue: George Weston Recital Hall, Meridian Arts Centre, 5040 Yonge Street, Toronto
Alice Ping Yee Ho (b. 1960) is a celebrated Canadian composer known for her eclectic, innovative musical voice that bridges Eastern and Western traditions. Her diverse body of work spans opera, orchestral, chamber, and solo repertoire, often marked by its emotional intensity, textural richness, and cultural synthesis.
One of her most ambitious and evocative works to date is the Piano Concerto Pictures from an Imagined Exhibition (2024), a six-movement orchestral journey inspired by the visual art and lives of pianist-painter Christina Petrowska Quilico and Hong Kong ink master Wesley Tongson. Premiered by Petrowska Quilico with the Kindred Spirits Orchestra under the baton of Kristian Alexander, the concerto reimagines the tone poem tradition as a fluid, synesthetic dialogue between music and visual art, East and West, spirit and form.
The concerto opens with “Carried by the River,” a lyrical evocation of flow, memory, and continuity. The piano part, nuanced and expressive, rides atop undulating orchestral textures that reflect both Quilico’s layered paintings and Tongson’s meditative brushwork. In “Free Strokes,” Ho embraces Tongson’s unbound calligraphic energy, weaving rhythmic vitality and improvisatory
flourishes into a spontaneous, breath-like musical language.
The fifth movement, “Dancing Colours,” titled after Wesley Tongson's 1991 solo exhibition of the same name, bursts forth with kaleidoscopic joy, channeling Quilico’s vibrant visual world into a scherzo-like celebration. The brass section opens with a jubilant fanfare, while the piano and orchestra engage in a vivid, virtuosic exchange flashes of sound capturing the spontaneity of light and colour.
The final movement, “Eclipsing Dreams,” is introspective and elegiac. Earlier motifs return transformed, softened by time and grief. It is a meditation on impermanence, death, and creative endurance honouring Tongson’s passing and Quilico’s indomitable artistic spirit. The music swells from fragile stillness to transcendent affirmation, closing the work in a gesture of luminous resolve.
Commissioned by the Kindred Spirits Orchestra with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Pictures from an Imagined Exhibition transcends the traditional concerto form. It stands as a multi-sensory tribute to two visionary artists and a compelling testament to the power of music to bridge worlds sonic, spiritual, and human.
Text courtesy of Kindred Spirits Orchestra.
Images: Wesley Tongson Solo Exhibition, gdm Hong Kong, 2020 (installation view)
Learn more--
https://ksorchestra.ca/2025-2026-season/images-at-an-exhibition/
