Dinuk Wijerante
Type of Art: Musician
Dates: Aug 22nd
Location: Alderney Landing – Outdoor Mainstage
The Sri Lankan-born, Canada-based composer-performer Dinuk Wijeratne has been described by the Toronto Star as ‘an artist who reflects a positive vision of our cultural future’, and by the New York Times as ‘exuberantly creative’. His boundary-crossing work sees him equally at home in collaborations with symphony orchestras and string quartets, Tabla players and DJs, and takes him to international venues as poles apart as the Berlin Philharmonie and the North Sea Jazz Festival. This fall, Dinuk is curator for the Canadian Music Centre during Toronto’s Nuit Blanche—a city-wide celebration of contemporary art, and continues work on new commissions for Bev Johnston, the Afiara String Quartet, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Dinuk made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2004 as a composer, conductor, and pianist, performing with Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. A second Carnegie appearance followed in 2009 alongside tabla legend Zakir Hussain. Dinuk has also appeared at the Kennedy Center (Washington DC), Opera Bastille (Paris), Lincoln Center (New York), Sri Lanka, Japan, and across the Middle East.
For an upbeat set of his globally-inspired music at Prismatic 2014, Dinuk leads an ensemble of some of the finest musicians on Canada’s East Coast, also featuring Toronto’s acclaimed World Musician Ernie Tollar.