Jamie Drake of Toronto’s TorQ Percussion Quartet describes a particularly busy few days:

As a percussion quartet, all four of us in TorQ are used to multitasking. We do it all the time — the juggle between practicing and administration, between different styles of music, between different instruments, even between different sticks. This week, though, the four of us are taking multi-tasking to a whole other level (at least for us).

For the first time in the history of our group, we have three concerts within a week that all have completely separate programmes; there’s not one piece of music that overlaps between concerts.  The end result so far:  We’ve been spending way more time with each other than our respective spouses.  (As for whether that’s a good or bad thing, you’d have to ask them.)

• At 8 p.m. on Sunday (Nov. 11) at Lula Lounge, we’re presenting Notes from Brazil, the second show of our 2012-2013 concert series.

(John Terauds was kind enough to review the first concert of the series here.)

Notes from Brazil is a bit of a departure for us. As a contemporary, classical-ish music ensemble, we rarely do a concert focused on the music of one place or culture. For this show we are joined by veteran Toronto percussionist and composer Mark Duggan. We’ll be playing some his arrangements of traditional choro tunes, as well as some compositions inspired in some fashion by Brazil.

We’ll also be doing tunes by Andy Narrell, Chick Corea and Ary Barroso. More details and tickets for the show are available on our website, here. If you’d like to have dinner before the show (and thereby guarantee yourself a great seat), call Lula Lounge at 416.588.0307 for dinner reservations.  Doors open at 7 p.m.

• On Wednesday (Nov. 14) at 7:30 p.m., we join the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at Koerner Hall for music about as far away from Brazilian tunes as you might imagine: Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. 

This piece is normally performed with five or six percussionists, but we’ll be covering the parts with just the four of us (reference the “juggling of sticks” comment above).

We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Mendelssohn Choir, and even more thrilled to be making our debut in Koerner Hall, a fabulous space for musicians and audience, both visually and acoustically.

This program will also include Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year and Eric Whitacre’s Cloudburst.  Tickets are available here.

• Finally, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday (Nov. 16), we’ll be playing a solo concert at Brock University in the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre as part of their Encore! Professional Performing Arts series.

This again is a whole different programme, where we’ll be playing pieces from both of our albums, as well as some fairly recent commissions.  Tickets for this Peterborough performance are available here.

Then on Saturday, we sleep in.

Besides our website, you can also follow us on Facebook, and Twitter (@torqpercussion).

Jamie Drake