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🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBC #Radio3's #ThroughTheNight Georges Bizet, Mark Dubois, Mark Pedrotti, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony & Raffi Armenian: 🎵 Au fond du temple saint (from 'The Pearl Fishers') #BBCRadio3 #GeorgesBizet #MarkDubois #MarkPedrotti #KitchenerWaterlooSymphony #RaffiArmenian

KITCHENER WATERLOO SYMPHONY LAUNCHES 2025-2026 SEASON

September 2025 will mark the beginning of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s (KWS) 2025-26 season. Excitement in the region’s classical music scene is high and hopeful.

“The 2025-26 season marks the next step in restoring the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s prominence in Waterloo Region’s Cultural Communities,” the official 2025-26 season brochure reads.

This restoration is in the wake of the KWS’s abrupt 2023 closure. Although the 2023 season was canceled just two days before it was set to begin, money had been an issue for some time. In 2019, the organization had a deficit of $730,000.

Following closures due to COVID-19, subscription sales for the KWS dropped by 75 per cent— from 8,000 members to just 2,000. By April 2023, the deficit had reached $909,000 and was projected to hit $2 million by 2025. The symphony declared bankruptcy in September 2023 and all board members except the chair resigned.

“[COVID-19] killed an already weakened symphony,” KWS’s new Board Chair, Bill Poole said.

Rather than restart from scratch, musicians of the KWS proposed to creditors that their debts be non-payable and their bankruptcy annulled.

“It allowed us to be the same name and organization when applying for artist council grants,” Kathy Robertson, co-chair of the Players’ Committee and french horn player, said.

These efforts were successful, and the symphony’s bankruptcy was annulled in October 2024. Musicians immediately got to work putting on a 2024-25 season with money from a GoFundMe campaign.

“Internally, the players continued to do everything to put the concerts on and to pay for them. They did everything, like bringing the timpani from downstairs, getting stuff on trucks, setting up stands, striking stands,” Poole said.

The 2025-26 season ushers in a new era for the KWS, one that is decidedly less scattered than the last, but still recovering.

“It’s operating as a professional organization…with staff,” Robinson said.

“As minimal staff as you can imagine,” Poole said.

This leanness is KWS’s solution to remaining deficit-free. Post-September 2023, the board has a strict no-deficit policy, and the Centre in the Square, Waterloo Region’s main concert hall, (originally built with the KWS in mind), will no longer be a focal point in the symphony’s programming. In 2022-23, more than 40 shows were played at the Centre in the Square. In 2025-26, there will only be 3.

“We’ve gone from the symphony playing lots of concerts in the big hall, and doing as much other stuff, outreach, as possible, to playing a lot of other stuff and a few concerts in the big hall,” Poole said.

One of these few concerts will be the KWS Fundraising Gala, on Nov. 20, 2025. The symphony will play Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. On the whole, things look uncertain, yet hopeful to Poole and Robinson.

“We are committed to keeping the music alive,” Poole said.

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