BY CHARLOTTE LILLEY
Conductor Fawzi Haimor’s Calgary Philharmonic debut — this January’s It Takes Two: A Symphonic Collaboration concert — will also serve as a homecoming of sorts.
From memories of visiting family here as a child to eventually meeting his wife in the city, the Chicago-born Haimor describes Calgary as “kind of like a second home.” It’s a connection that extends to the Calgary Philharmonic as well.
“After [my wife and I] got engaged, the very first performance that we saw together was the Calgary Phil,” he recalls. “She’s not a musician, and so I wanted to show her what life is like as a musician. Naturally, the best way to do that was to go to a performance of the Calgary Phil. And she loved it.”
Haimor’s relationship to the city makes his first performance with the Calgary Phil all the more exciting. With side-by-side performances from the Calgary Phil and the Calgary Youth Orchestra (CYO), plus cellist on-the-rise Luka Coetzee as the soloist (she was recently named one of CBC’s “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30”), It Takes Two puts collaboration front and centre, a focus that aligns with Haimor’s own philosophy on music making.
“It’s not me coming in with simply my ideas,” he says, explaining that conducting is always a collaborative process. “I don’t work that way.”
In his role as the recently appointed Music Director of the Marin Symphony, that ethos involves long-term relationship building with the orchestra. “When you work in an extended role, you begin to know and understand each other, and you start to develop an opportunity to really grow the ensemble over time.”
For debut performances with ensembles that he hasn’t worked with before, the timeline from rehearsal to concert may be shorter but the approach remains the same.
“Any time I go into a debut, it’s just as if I were going anywhere else,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to work with incredible musicians, people that I’ve never met before, and to focus, really, on the music and what it is we’re trying to convey, the messages of collaboration.”
With a program that celebrates both new music and old favourites, It Takes Two, presented in partnership with One Yellow Rabbit for the 2026 High Performance Rodeo, offers lots to look forward to for musicians and audience members alike. Having a mix of repertoire was important to Haimor, especially in working with CYO.
“For those [CYO musicians] who do end up going into music professionally, they’re going to know that they’re not just going to be playing the war horses from the past and the great composers, but they also will and should play new music.”
The concert opens with Luka Coetzee’s performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante, a piece that Haimor says “allows both the soloist and the orchestra to have opportunities and moments to shine,” and continues with Valerie Coleman’s 2019 piece, Umoja: An Anthem for Unity. Haimor says the latter piece was a natural choice, “considering that we are living in a difficult world, and music is an opportunity to genuinely bring people together.”
Also on the program are George Gershwin’s An American in Paris — a chance for the young musicians to take on a challenging piece of repertoire — and Alberto Ginastera’s Four Dances from Estancia, which Haimor describes as “just a wild ride.”
“It really is put there for the kids to have fun, and for the Calgary Phil to have fun with them, too.”
As someone who believes strongly in the importance of music education, the opportunity to bring together the CYO and the Calgary Phil is something Haimor finds especially exciting.
“It gives our young musicians the chance to work with the pros, and for me, it’s a real joy to be part of that collaboration,” he says.
Haimor’s career to date has spanned multiple continents, seeing him lead ensembles in countries ranging from the United States to Germany to New Zealand to Japan. Through this array of international experiences, communication, collaboration, and community have remained central to his work.
“Our job as musicians is not simply to just play music. It’s not our job to just entertain. Our job is to serve the community the way we know best,” he says. “The world can feel heavy at times and people often wake up with so much on their shoulders. As professional musicians, we have the ability to lift that burden, even for just a couple of hours and carry it through music. It’s what we were born to do, and this is how we serve our community. It’s healing, it’s therapeutic, and it’s how we bring a little bit of peace to the world.”