Mexican singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Silvana Estrada is one of the new additions to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts 2026-27 season. The 29-year-old has gained fame for her poetic blend of Latin indie folk and Latin alternative music on her Marchita and Vendrán Suaves Lluvias albums.
Estrada shared the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist in 2022 with nonagenarian singer Ángela Álvarez. Two years later, Estrada was nominated for a Grammy for Best Global Music Performance for “Milagro y Desastre”. She will perform at the Chan Centre on UBC’s Point Grey campus on September 6, marking her first appearance in Vancouver since playing the Biltmore Hotel in 2022.
Her upcoming performance comes two days after the Chan Centre season-opening show by Tinariwen, a group of Taureg musicians who pioneered desert blues. They developed their guitar-driven sound in the northwest African region known as Azawad. Situated in southern Algeria and northern Mali, it was an unrecognized state in 2012-13.
In 2012, Tinariwen captured the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album for Tassili.
Watch Silvana Estrada’s official video for “Dime”.
Ta-Nehisi Coates coming in November
Estrada isn’t the only exciting personality coming to the UBC venue. The Chan Centre revealed that it has partnered with SFU’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies to present U.S. author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. His books include The Message—a series of essays about his travels to South Africa, the Middle East, and Senegal—and the National Book Award–winning Between the World and Me. It addressed the history of race in the United States through a conversation with his son.
Last month, Coates wrote a piece in Vanity Fair questioning whether Kamala Harris’s silence on Gaza cost her the presidential election in 2024. He will be at the Chan Centre on November 8.
Then on November 19, the venue will host An Evening with Gabor Maté. The Vancouver physician has written bestselling books on a range of important subjects, including trauma, addiction, and attention deficit disorder.
Meanwhile, jazz lovers can look forward to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme Performed Live on September 26 in the Telus Studio Theatre. It will feature Juno-nominated saxophonist Ryan Oliver and other B.C. jazz artists. A second jazz event—Portraits of the First Ladies of Jazz starring Vancouver’s Dawn Pemberton—will take place at the same location on October 24.
Yet another local artist, Krystle Dos Santos, will perform First Ladies of the Blues on November 21.
Chan Centre welcomes Ocean Vuong
Another highlight among the new announcements is the first Vancouver appearance of U.S. poet and novelist Ocean Vuong (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, The Emperor of Gladness). The Ho Chih Minh City–born writer and onetime refugee (as a toddler) will be at the Chan Centre on January 28.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous won the American Book Award, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the Ferro-Grumley Award. The Emperor of Gladness was selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
The Chan Centre also announced upcoming performances by sensational classical musicians, including Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho (January 16) and South Korean cellist Jaemin Han, who will perform with pianist David Fung on March 13.
“These new additions continue to reflect the breadth of artistic experiences we strive to present at the Chan Centre,” Chan Centre head curator Jarrett Martineau said in a news release.. “We’re thrilled to welcome renowned writers and thinkers shaping our cultural landscape, some of the world’s best classical musicians, Latin America’s next great star, and to offer a dedicated, club-style jazz series in our Telus Studio Theatre. This season is bigger than ever, and there’s even more still to come! I can’t wait to see it all come alive in our spaces.”
For a full list of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts Centre’s 2026-27 season, visit the website.
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