Confluence Concerts returned to live performance last night at Heliconian Hall.  The concert, curated by Patricia O’Callaghan, was titled A Simple Twist of Fate and featured an eclectic mix of music either on the topic of Fate or that was entwined with the fates of the performers.

It was the typical Confluence approach of familiar and less familiar music often performed in unconventional ways.  Examples of the performance possibilities included Andrew Downing playing Weill’s Lost in the Stars on double bass or Suba Sankaran and Dylan Bell’s arrangement of the Bach Prelude in E Major for two a cappella voices.  There was more conventional classical material with a lovely rendering by Robert Kortgaard of Peter Maxwell Davies’ haunting Farewell to Stromness and Patricia O’Callaghan’s fine performance of Purcell’s Thy hand, Belinda.

There were excursions to East Africa with Waleed Abdulhamid and friends playing Rafiki yangu and Ireland with an idiomatic performance of Vanity’s Disguise by Miranda Mulholland.  There was plenty more to like in the roughly hour long programme performed in various combos by the above named plus Joey Wright and, of course, Larry Beckwith.  There’s another chance to see the show tonight ($25 advance, 30 at the door) or it will be available for free from April 22nd on Confluence’s Youtube channel.

What I really like about this concert series, apart from exposure to music I’m not familiar with, is that it feels like being invited into someone’s home to join friends making music.  It’s relaxed, unpretentious and joyous.  And I could use some joy right now.