Every world-music fan knows about talking drums. But singing drums? Even to bagpipe player, gamelan expert, and composer Michael O'Neill, the concept seemed strange. It didn't take long, however, before he made sense of it, thanks to his long-running collaboration with Uzume Taiko.

"The thing that most surprised me when I first started working with Uzume is that they called what they were playing 'songs'," reports O'Neill, reached at home in East Vancouver. "I suppose it's a natural thing for percussionists to think of what they're doing in a melodic way, but I really didn't hear it like that until they said that. Then I started listening to it from that point of view and hearing the changing melodies between the three drummers, because there's often interlocking material, and you really can hear it as song."

The natural links between Uzume's three percussionists and O'Neill's bagpipe trio, Mearingstone, are celebrated in a rare shared concert at the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Friday (November 23). Both ensembles will perform separately and then, joined by shakuhachi master Alcvin Ramos, they'll essay a sampling of the piper's uniquely complex tunes–with one probable highlight being the rarely played full-length version of Luffness, which the combined septet recorded on O'Neill's 2006 release, Ontophony.

"We've only had a chance to do that once or twice before," says Uzume's Bonnie Soon, in a separate telephone conversation. "It's a serious work, although I think half the program is maybe more boisterous."

Soon and her fellow percussionists had their own accommodations to make when they started working with O'Neill and his pipers, although the basic idea fit well with their mandate of opening up the world of traditional taiko drumming. "With Michael," the former Kokoro Dance member explains, "the challenge is to complement the melody and the arrangement with something visual. Not all taiko groups focus as much on the visual aspect as Uzume does, but that's always been my goal, I guess because I'm a dancer in my heart.

"Michael is always very clear about the root of what he's writing, and when he tells me that, I always get visual images," she continues. "When he's describing Jedediah Island or buzzing bees or walking across a misty moor, I kind of get all these visions of what he's thinking when he's writing the music, and we try to embody that in some of the movements we might make. I guess that's just the way I approach creation: I try to find the essence of what inspired the work."

In addition to the "serious" pieces, among them O'Neill's Every Part of the Animal and Tsu Don, as well as Luffness, Friday's program will offer a few lighter moments, including a new duet for bagpipes and martial artist performed by Mearingstone's Sylvia DeTar and Uzume's Jason Overy.

"That'll be an interesting visual," says Soon. "I think they'll both be moving on-stage, and Sylvia is great to watch. And Uzume is going to be doing a new number on our own, which incorporates a bit of electronics and dance. We're calling that Taikno Dansu. So we're always experimenting with movement and new sounds–and we like to have fun."