By Katie Ryan
It’s safe to assume that the men of TorQ don’t travel lightly. The percussion quartet packs more than 50 percussion instruments with them when they travel from theatre to theatre for their shows.
When TorQ – Richard Burrows, Adam Campbell, Jamie Drake and Daniel Morphy – unpack their gear at the Vic Juba Community Theatre later this month, Burrows promised there will be about 75 instruments on stage at some point during their show.
“At the beginning, it’s a little bit more minimalistic,” he explained over the phone from Toronto, prior to Christmas, noting TorQ starts its shows with just a few vibraphones and marimbas.
When thinking of a percussion ensemble, the tendency is to think loud. But that’s not entirely the case. Burrows said local audience members will experience a wide range of dynamics during the Jan. 18 show.
“The one special thing about percussion, in my opinion, is probably that it’s the only instrument that can get the extremes of dynamic,” he said, adding mallet instruments take care of lyrical lines. “It’s going to be very subtle and delicate and then we are going to have some bombastic fun percussion pieces that have a lot of groove and energy to it. We really take the audience on a bit of a roller coaster ride through dynamics, through groove, through musicality and musical maturity. Basically, you are not going to see any drum sets on stage at all.”
As their show progresses, Burrows said TorQ will slowly bring other percussion instruments on stage and before sending their audience home, the ensemble will finish with a piece that combines all of the instruments introduced. TorQ will perform John Cage’s Third Construction, the seminal work of his canon which includes many “odd” instruments, said Burrows, listing a conch shell, tin cans and an instrument called the lion’s roar.
“This is actually one of the oldest works in percussion, ironically though, it was only written in 1941,” he said. “But because of the nature of percussion being so new and novel to the entire world really, the majority of percussion works all have sort of a new element to it because all of the pieces are really being written now.”
Striving to add new energy to percussion repertoire and performance, was what initially brought the original members of TorQ together in 2004. They’ve competed as the sole Canadian representative at the Luxembourg International Percussion Quartet Competition and have performed to much acclaim across Canada, including feature performances at MusicFest Canada Nationals. TorQ also hits the road to share their knowledge and talent with about 75 schools each year.
“We do a lot of outreach. Since we are all university trained, we are very strong believers in education, particularly music education,” said Burrows. “We literally tour all over North America doing outreach wherever we go, but the primary performances happen within Ontario for our schools.”
At each school TorQ visits, Burrows said he hopes to inspire budding percussionists to find their beat, and so far, according to what he’s heard, it seems to be working.
“One of the signature pieces in our school shows is the garbage cans at the end of the show, and the teachers always give us feedback saying the students go back to their classroom and flip over the cans and play with their pencils and pens,” said Burrows, who also teaches at the University of Toronto and plays in other ensembles.
“In fact, the last school we were at, the teacher actually warned the students to ask their parents before they started taking garbage bags out of the garbage cans.”
And when TorQ shares its unique repertoire with the Border City – including music from the ensemble’s recently released second album two +two – Burrows said it’s a show for all ages.
“The idea behind this music is that it is accessible for everybody and it’s got a little bit of edge to it in terms of the fact that there is groove to it but at the same time there is subtlety, where it’s not to scare away any of the audiences to know that there is actually going to be some slow, lyrical melody that you are going to be able to go away singing,” he said. 
“We actually start to challenge the idea of what is noise or what is music, but all at the same time really giving the audience a real sense of groove.”