DiscoverArt RestartPiano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.
Piano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.

Piano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.

Update: 2024-09-23
Share

Description

You might be forgiven for guessing SHHH! Ensemble to be a collection of musically minded librarians, but you’d be way off the mark. Because SHHH! Ensemble makes noise. A lot of it. On a variety of instruments. And people are loving it. Which might be especially surprising given that SHHH! mostly plays contemporary classical works, a genre that can be intimidating to many audiences. So how do they do it?

SHHH! comprises Ottawa-based life partners Edana Higham, a pianist, and Zac Pulak, a percussionist, making them possibly the world’s only professional piano/percussion duo. Since launching their ensemble in 2016, Edana and Zac have made waves in Canada’s classical-music scene, playing in venues and festivals from coast to coast and garnering raves from critics and audiences alike. They have collaborated with renowned contemporary classical composers, including John Beckwith, Monica Pearce and past Art Restart guest Frank Horvat.

Here they explain how they decided to join musical forces and how they’ve developed the “avant-accessible” style that at each performance invites an audience to take a meticulously curated and delightful musical journey with them. 


Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Comments 
In Channel
loading
00:00
00:00
x

0.5x

0.8x

1.0x

1.25x

1.5x

2.0x

3.0x

Sleep Timer

Off

End of Episode

5 Minutes

10 Minutes

15 Minutes

30 Minutes

45 Minutes

60 Minutes

120 Minutes

Piano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.

Piano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.

The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts