Visionaries Past & Present – Yousuf Karsh & Dinuk Wijeratne

Countless Journeys

Season 3 of Countless Journeys from the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 celebrates the contributions of Canadian immigrants to the performing and visual arts. We begin with a celebration of the life and work of legendary photographer Yousuf Karsh. Karsh was 13 years old when his family fled the Armenian Genocide, escaping to Syria. Two years later, his family sent Karsh, alone, to Halifax, where he was met by an uncle who brought him to his home in Sherbrooke Quebec. Karsh’s life story, from refugee to world-class photographer, unfolds, along with more than 100 of his portraits, in a wonderful exhibit featured at the Canadian Museum of Immigration, The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence. We speak with Dr. Hilliard Goldfarb, who is senior curator emeritus with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the lead curator of the exhibit. “By the time of his closing the studio in Ottawa in 1993, he had literally photographed most of the famous people in the world: Churchill, Castro, Trudeau, Khrushchev, Jacqueline and John Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt, Einstein, Picasso,” says Goldfarb. And Dinuk Wijeratne is a Juno award winning composer and performer whose music blurs boundaries and shakes up traditional approaches to classical music. Born in Sri Lanka, raised in Dubai, Dinuk came to Canada in 2004 after landing a job with Symphony Nova Scotia. Dinuk has performed on the biggest stages, like Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Centre and the Opera Bastille, alongside musical luminaries like Yo Yo Ma and Zakir Hussain. Dinuk Wijeratne speaks with host Paolo Pietropaolo about his life and musical journey, and his devotion to eliminating barriers in the world of classical music. “Classical music has a very traditional past, it has a very centralised past, but I firmly believe that it should be accessible to everyone. I think that everyone, every single artist who says they engage with classical music should feel totally free to express and explore their own identity.”