Earth Leaps Up

Their music is flooded with sunshine. One plays the harp, the other the piano. The pieces seem like watercolors painted with four hands. Both are singing. In angelic voices. They met at the University of British Columbia almost ten years ago. One has a rhythmic approach. But their duet began at the Banff Centre for the Arts a few years ago. The other is more focused on melody and harmony.

The structure of their songs is anything but conventional. They remain very accessible, fluid, but with a complexity in the harmonies that owes more to contemporary music. With their intersecting voices overlapping and weaving, one thinks of Nico Muhly, sometimes of Björk for certain audacities, and with their fingers flying and fluttering on the strings and the keyboard, of David Lang, of Electric Counterpoint‘s Steve Reich himself, in certain pieces with a minimalist touch.

And always this light, that of their celestial voices, of the timbres so complementary in the harp and the piano. Yes, that light.