Recording: Imaginary Percussion Ensemble

Artist: Imaginary Percussion Ensemble

Song: [first piece]^*

Recorded at East End United Church's Gymnasium (The Music Gallery presents What Is: heart(break) – Rebound), May 16, 2025.

Imaginary Percussion Ensemble - [first piece]

If the other nights of the MG's What Is: heart(break) were anywhere nearly as innovative and unique as this night, it musta been a heckuva spring fling. Heading down into the basement of the East End United Church, the audience found a subterranean basketball court that they could lounge on — or hover over, given the raised platforms running along both sides of the court. A classic east-end "Tad find", animating an untraditional venue in the manner that Tad Michalak has done so often over the years.

Leading off the night arranged in a triangle of power, Germaine Liu, Mark Zurawinski and Joe Sorbara brought some of their renowned game-like percussion exercises (passing around a cardboard box, hiding under the polyethylene silver emergency blanket that it contained, clanking plastic pop bottles, and so on) but at this show these were treated more as punctuation points between more formal pieces based around mallet percussion. That allowed a more melodic sensibility to move to the foregound, as heard on the charming piece here.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!