Founded in 2010 by soprano Dory Hayley and pianist Alejandro Ochoa, the Blueridge Chamber Music Festival has grown from a grassroots organization into one of Vancouver’s premier classical music series. Best known for imaginative and inclusive concert programming, the Blueridge Festival combines monuments of the chamber music repertoire with rediscovered lesser-known works and pieces by marginalized composers.

Blueridge has commissioned over 20 new works, including pieces by Cris Derksen, Dorothy Chang, Camilo Mendez, Jordan Nobles, Olivia Shortt, Russell Wallace, and Rita Ueda. Since 2021, at least 50% of each season’s music has been written by women and nonbinary composers.

The Blueridge Festival is interested in experimenting with the role of the audience through participatory projects like Musicircus (2019), where “as many musicians as possible” performed anything they wanted–all at the same time, and 19 Waltzes for the Distanced (2020), where participants visited one of 57 chance-determined locations across Vancouver and performed, listened, or made a record.

Blueridge has presented co-productions with outstanding local arts organizations like Little Chamber Music, the Polygon Gallery, O’Dela Arts, and Redshift Music Society. In 2021, the Blueridge Festival partnered with the UBC School of Architecture to create FOLIUM, a portable concert structure designed to provide a beautiful natural acoustic for chamber music concerts in parks and public spaces.