Soundstreams’ penultimate concert of the season at the Jane Mallett Theatre on Thursday evening featured “love songs” from a range of (more or less) contemporary Canadian composers under the overall direction of David Fallis.

First up was Ana Sokolović’s Dring, Dring; a four movement, mainly onomatopoeic piece for a cappella septet.  Like everything else on the programme it required and got extreme vocal virtuosity from the gang of Vania Chan, Carla Huhtanen, Lindsay McIntyre, Robin Dann Bud Roach, Keith Lam and Alex samaras.  The everyday rituals and noises of a simple phone call get turned into a mini music drama.

Vivier’s Shiraz consisted of Gregory Oh on piano playing incredibly intricate and athletic music while a film; Leora, directed by Michael Greyeyes played.  The film featured dancer Claudia Moore in a series of interactions with vases of flowers evoking Madrid in the 1970s.  Intriguing.

Then came my favourite piece of the night; Thierry Tidrow’s I Want to Tell You Everything; commissioned by Soundstreams for this programme.  Six singers this time (at least until Carla made a dramatic entrance with a surprise confession) singing a fragmented series of “confessions” in the language of particularly inarticulate teens with, bizarrely, a barbershop trio. stuck in the middle.  I like, you know, really, really fucking liked it.

After the interval came Nicole Lizée’s karaoke inspired Karappo Okesutura Vol. III for amplified voices (Carla and Greg); keyboards (Greg again) and percussion (Noam Bierstone).  It was about what I expect from the mistress of the cracked vinyl LP.  It was loud and rock inflected with 1950s video merging into psychedelia and lots of brightly coloured building blocks getting thrown about.  Definitely not Schubert.

And finally back to the septet for Claude Vivier’s Love Songs. This mixes up lyrical German, Latin and French poetry, English nursery rhymes, bits of Romeo and Juliet and a Russian folk song all broken up and recombined along with lots of extended vocal technique.  Complex, exhilarating and an absolute pig to perform but done so convincingly here.

I believe this programme is going on tour to Dublin and Chicoutimi over the next couple of months so if you happen to be around go see it.  It’s fun.

Photo credit: Cylla v von Tiedemann