At the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Sunday, April 18

It’s strange that we don’t hear choir and cello together more often, and it’s great when we do. The pairing makes perfect sense, the cello being the closest of all string instruments to the human voice in range and timbre, its wordless vocalise adding colour and body to the sung text.

A program by musica intima called silhouette, upstairs at the Chan Centre’s Telus Studio Theatre on Sunday, presented the 12 self-conducted singers accompanied by cellist Ariel Barnes in a program that ranged from a madrigal by the early Romantic Robert Pearsall to a new locally written work by Jocelyn Morlock. The theme was a philosophical examination of women and the program notes were reflective and beautifully written, emphasizing the ambivalence inherent in art.

It was anything but a stand-and-deliver performance. I’ve never seen so much movement from musica intima, who are never normally known to be static. There was a lot of unusual blocking here, almost choreography at times, and I don’t think it always worked, sometimes only serving as a distraction from the choir’s often exquisite singing. But they used the unusual layout of the theatre imaginatively and the effect was probably best enjoyed by those in the upper levels. What did come off was the use of a backlit screen for its many silhouette effects, particularly the outline of a woman in the shape of a cello with two Man Ray–like f-holes on her body.

Barnes fit perfectly with the choir, as did his two solos by Milton Barnes, of which I especially liked the Zoltán Kodály–like Lamentations of Jeremiah. As for the choir, I’ve rarely heard them sound better and much of their material was contemporary, such as John Tavener’s Svyati, which was sung with great control and beautiful intonations from the basses. Admirable, too, was Arvo Pí¤rt’s The Woman With the Alabaster Box, with its grave minimalism and close harmonies.

Movement really paid off in the Estonian Veljo Tormis’s Vepsian Paths, a delightful collection of folk songs with a modern twist to the harmonies and real wit in the singing.

The Blue Bird by Charles Villiers Stanford was simple and fervent and a good introduction to the final piece, Morlock’s Exaudi, which begins in Gregorian-chantlike gravity, builds to a frightening crescendo, and subsides into radiant peace. This new work is on musica intima’s just-released CD called Into Light, and is a strong argument for getting it.

See more at Lloyd Dykk’s Vancouver Scene blog at lloyddykk.blogspot.com/.