Welcome to Off Centre Music Salon's 17th Season: a year of surprises!

When we first founded Off Centre in 1994, it was to create a holistic musical and artistic experience for our performers and our audience - a achance to play and hear vocal, chamber and solo repertoire in an atmosphere that evokes a 19th century European salon. From our first concerts at Euromusic in Markham to our current venue - CBC's intimate and acoustically superior Glenn Gould Studio - via a few memorable seasons held at Toronto's historic Arts and Letters Club, Off Centre has kept its promise to our city's sister arts, as was done in the age of Schubert, to programme an innovative blend of traditional repretoire alongside rarely performed musical, poetic, literary and visual gems, and finally, to create a world in which the concert becomes a feast for all five senses. Along the way, we have also managed to form a delightfully "off centre" family of artists and patrons that join us, season after season, for our increasingly adventurous journeys of discovery.

Because we know that you are still thinking about the surprises we mentioned earlier and the suspense is just killing you, we will happily reveal some of them right away, but we're keeping the rest up our sleeve.

We begin with a programme entitled Russia in Two Acts in which we time-travel between the world of Shastakovich (the conforming non-conformist) and that of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin.

The next salon is devoted to our beloved Schubert (in our 17th annual Schubertiad!) who was a master of both the grander-scale contemplative sonata and the intensely concise lied (which we have come to think of as 19th Century twittering). From there, to ward off your end-of-March blues, Off Centre presents the Toronto premiere of Pietro Mascagni's light and sunny operetta-in-concert "Si", starring the great Italian soprano Serena Farnocchia.

We close the season with a Salon devoted entirely to love and suffering... Will it be our Russian Salon? Or our Spanish Salon? This season, let us surprise you.

Our guest artists include internationally acclaimed musicians performing alongside rising stars on the Canadian scene. Distinguished Canadian critics, filmmakers and actors from Soulpepper Theatre provide dramatic performances that compliment our musical offerings. Our hosts - Stuart Hamilton, Julian Zarankin and newcomers to Off Centre Toronto novelist Sheila Heti and music critic John Terauds - will offer witty and erudite narratives to introduce each concert and its themes. Engage in a musical experience that will transport you to an era when music was a form of intimate conversation as well as entertainment.

Join us for our 2011-2012 season and become a member of the Off Centre Music Salon's extended family!

Inna Perkins and Boris Zarankin
Founders and Artistic Directors