An Unexpected Gem Unearthed in Ottawa: The NAC Orchestra
July 30, 2025
I came to Ottawa in 2023 to do my masters degree in art history. I didn’t want the degree to reach a specific career milestone or get into an ideal role - I came because the heart lead me here, and I didn’t know why. It felt like a fun scavenger hunt where everyday I was just curious about what I would uncover, or why life would pull me here.
While there are many beautiful things I found and nurtured during this chapter (and no shortage of challenges), one of the biggest gems I found was the National Arts Centre (NAC) orchestra.
While my original research intention for grad school was to study Mark Rothko’s colour field paintings as “abstract landscapes”, life presented me instead with a project on Lawren Harris’ late-career abstractions as expressions of his spiritual life, specifically his engagement with yogic themes and practices from the Bhagavad Gita.
It just so happened that I found myself in the city where nearly ALL of his personal notebooks and journals were located, as well as his personal annotated copy of a Gita commentary. It was a gold mine. And to my surprise, he wrote frequently about the orchestra. I thought to myself “well, the only natural next step to further understand him is to go to the orchestra”.
From the journals of Lawren Harris, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa
It also happened that I was living in a city which so generously offers discounted orchestra tickets to folks under the age of 30. My time here was age 28-30. So I went to every single orchestra show, sometimes twice, and it completely enhanced the trajectory of not only my academic research, but my painting and spiritual practices as well. Through a combination of Harris’ writing, the NAC orchestra shows, my reading of Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan’s The Mysticism of Sound and Music, tantric meditation practice, and my evolving creative process, I found myself exploring the orchestra as a metaphor for the unity, diversity, and harmony of all creation.
I felt more devotion, beauty, unifying power, ecstasy, and the resonance of meditation in that orchestra hall than any yoga or meditation class I attended in the city. Southam hall had become my temple. Or perhaps more accurately, beautiful temple doors to the radiance of my own heart. I could write an essay on the ways it has influenced my life and practice, but for now here are a few photos of the space and the artwork that wouldn’t be possible without it.
The light of this gem will forever shine through my life’s work.
Orawa, 16×20”, Digital Painting, 2025
Allegro, 16×20”, Acrylic on Canvas, 2025
Southam Hall, National Arts Centre, Ottawa
Boléro 1, 18×24”, Acrylic on Canvas, 2024
