In Water Song, Sunny Kim’s Ensemble Ochaye offers audiences a rare and captivating experience which blends sonic traditions, languages, and timbres and provides a glimpse into the many ways that water can sing.

Delicate rain sounds play during pre-performance and there is an opportunity to survey the array of instruments assembled including an intriguing kettle nested near the front of the stage. This is a theatrical performance.

Cellist Zoë Barry commences with delicate and meditative looped drones which set up a ceremonial air. Kim and the ensemble arrive as water bearers and bathe their hands before providing more layers to the soundscape with overlapping multi-lingual verses combined with Aviva Endean’s longing clarinet refrains.

Sunny Kim’s Ensemble Ochaye: Water Song. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan

The concert program is structured around shifting waters and each piece is presented as we witness water moving between vessels around the stage. Bubbles, splashes, ripples, and droplets all feature as integral to the compositions performed and Ensemble Ochaye embrace a reverence for water. This could tip over into indulgence but there are more than enough moments of levity throughout. A...