The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra began the 2025-26 season — its 107th — at the Orpheum Theatre Friday night, with a brilliant launch for what may well be a challenging moment for our orchestra.

Before the concert began, the audience was made freshly aware that these are fraught times for the arts. VSO musicians dressed in bright blue T-shirts were out in force at the entrances, politely greeting patrons, reminding them of ongoing contract negotiations, and providing a timely reminder of all the orchestra means for local audiences.

Inside the theatre, and once the last rousing notes of O Canada faded away, music director Otto Tausk conducted American composer Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), a work the maestro deemed a good companion for Richard Strauss’s 1896 Also sprach

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