The second concert in this year’s West End Micro Music Festival took place at Redeemer Lutheran Church on Friday night. Titled Alchemical Processes it featured a mix of early and modern works written or arranged for some combination of string quartet (Jennifer Murphy, Madlen Breckbill – violins, Laila Zakzook – viola, Philip Bergman – cello), harpsichord (Alexander Malikov) and clarinet or bass clarinet (Brad Cherwin).
It started out with Bach’s Concerto in A Major BWV 1055 arranged for string quartet, harpsichord and clarinet. It was enjoyable. Originally written for harpsichord and string orchestra, any loss of richness in the strings by only having one player on a part was compensated by the additional colours of the clarinet.
Last night the Happenstancers presented a short but extremely enjoyable Pierrot themed concert at 918 Bathurst. The major work, unsurprisingly, was Schoenberg’s melodrama Pierrot lunaire for voice and chamber ensemble. It was presented in two parts. The first fourteen poems formed the first half of the programme which closed out with the concluding seven. It was extremely well done. Danika Lorèn was an excellent choice as the voice. She has the technique for Schoenberg’s tricky sprechstimme as well as the innate musicality and sense of drama the piece needs. The standard “Pierrot ensemble” is perfectly suited for the Happenstancers typically eclectic mixing of instruments. Here we had Brad Cherwin on clarinets, Rebecca Maranis on flutes, Hee-See Yoon on violin and viola, Sarah Gans on cello and Alexander Malikov on piano. Simon Rivard conducted. Skilful playing and well timed interplay between instruments and voice made for a most satisfactory experience. 
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