Stir Cheat Sheet: 3 acts performing at Music on Main’s sun-speckled Summer Pop-Up Concerts
Mount Pleasant Park performers include M’Girl, the 240 Northern Percussion Ensemble, and pianists Bogdan Dulu and Forest Benson
Music on Main Summer Pop-Up Concerts. Photo by Jan Gates
Music on Main presents Summer Pop-Up Concerts at Mount Pleasant Park from August 18 to 20
POP-UP CONCERTS are returning to Mount Pleasant Park this summer.
Hosted by Music on Main, the three shows from August 18 to 20 are completely free, with no tickets required—just show up, bring a picnic blanket or low chair to sit on, and settle in for the music, which starts at 6:30 pm. Furry friends are welcome to watch too.
Mama’s Fish and Chips will be onsite serving up locally sourced seafood on August 18 and 19; think wild salmon burgers, crispy prawns, and of course the truck’s namesake fish and chips with tangy homemade tartar sauce. And the Planted food truck will be around on August 20, offering items like a fried oyster mushroom sandwich on warm challah bread with slaw and pickles, all slathered in harissa aioli.
As for the music, here are the artists you can expect at the park each evening.
Forest Benson.
Bogdan Dulu.
Bogdan Dulu and Forest Benson
August 18 at 6:30 pm
Romanian-born, Vancouver-based pianist Bogdan Dulu is an experienced force behind the keys who plays with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra; he also teaches at the VSO School of Music and Vancouver Academy of Music. Forest Benson—who was born in 2008—is a fast-rising piano star who won the grand prize at the Vancouver International Music Competition in 2023.
Dulu is Benson’s teacher in the Vancouver Academy of Music’s Young Artist Collegiate Program. The two pianists will join forces for this concert in a true representation of intergenerational learning and collaboration.
240 Northern Percussion Ensemble
August 19 at 6:30 pm
The marimba is one of those instruments that sounds unmistakably soft and summery. As mallets thump against wooden bars, a mellow sound resonates from the tubes below them. Niki Hung, Amber Chen, Greg Samek, and Gaël Chabot-Leclerc of 240 Northern Arts Society—which unites Vancouver’s percussion community for collaborations—will play marimba together on night two of the pop-up series. Expect everything from beloved classics to rich new arrangements from the four musicians.
M’Girl performing at one of Music on Main’s Summer Pop-Up Concerts last year. Photo by Jan Gates
M’Girl
August 20 at 6:30 pm
Hand-drum songs that draw on connections to land and water are the focus of this all-women Indigenous ensemble, which also performed at one of last year’s Summer Pop-Up Concerts. The artists performing include Kaitlyn Yott, Kelsey Wavey, and Cheri Maracle, who is of Haudenosaunee and Irish descent from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. Maracle is also an actor and playwright; local arts enthusiasts will recall that Paddle Song, her acclaimed one-woman musical about trailblazing Mohawk-English poet Pauline Johnson, was remounted at the Firehall Arts Centre last year. 
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