Feeding the Spirit

Edana Higham and Zac Pulak

It was a great pleasure to hear a brilliant 70-minute program given by the SHHH! Ensemble last night in the intimate surroundings of the Canadian Music Centre in Toronto.

They are embarking on a university tour with a provocative, interesting and entertaining collection of pieces for piano and percussion all having to do with the spirit.

Andy Akiho’s Karakurenai is an intriguing concept for a piece where the piano and marimba play in unison various motivic patterns in irregular and unusual time signatures.

John Beckwith’s Meanwhile stretches the expressive possibilities of the piano and marimba, with evocative glissandi dialogue between the instruments. At times they are working at cross-purposes, at times perfectly in synch. The latter part of this beautiful short piece has the marimba played with brushes and the piano strings strummed from the inside.

A solo percussion piece by Kelly-Marie Murphy followed, imitating mechanical inner workings and sounds. It was a captivating performance from Pulak, demonstrating his subtlety and power as a player.

John Gordon Armstrong’s The Angel’s Share is an understated, loving look at the tasting notes of various scotches and features a number of beautiful effects from both piano and percussion.

The final three pieces flowed seamlessly: an improvisation piece entitled SHHHuffle by Kevin Hanlon involving taped sounds as well as live riffing from the ensemble, morphing into a short chorale by JS Bach which had a haunting quality with the slight tuning discrepancies between piano and marimba and the final Grieving the Doubts of Angels by Micheline Roi brought the program to a suitable climax with truly virtuosic and intense playing from both Higham and Pulak.

As a whole, the program was a winner. I hope we’ll hear a lot more from this dynamic duo in the future and encourage you to catch them on their tour, the details of which you can find on their website: https://shhhensemble.com/

• Larry Beckwith