Music / Divine Darkness, Ensemble Offspring. The Street Theatre, July 4. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN.

A compact audience gathered in the biggest of The Street Theatre spaces for Divine Darkness, an intriguing and challenging program from modern music group Ensemble Offspring.

Some of the things you might expect from a classical small group were there, violin, viola, cello double bass piano and a brace woodwinds. But there was also a big and often inspirationally strange percussion set up run by the group’s artistic director Claire Edwardes and the performances made much use of film and lighting.

There were frequent delicious surprises. The opening piece, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Entropic Arrows was a gentle exchange between the players followed by Jane Sheldon’s setting of Charles Van Lerberghe’s poem Come, Dark Sigh, a sensual giving of voice to Eve meditating in a garden. Is it Eden? Sheldon herself was the singer and at one stage the player on a khaen, a haunting wind instrument from North East Thailand and Laos.

The big central piece was visiting American composer David T Little’s Ghostlight, a grand piece in four parts springing from the concept of the ghostlight that is left in an empty theatre, perhaps to placate the ghosts and spirits but just as likely as a safety measure to stop people falling into the orchestra pit in the dark.

This created its own ambience to add to the atmospherics on the film screen and the piece vigorously used just about all the musos available.  I was especially taken by the dark and sonorous section that seemed to reflect an attraction to the science fiction film music of Bernard Herrmann.

Ghostlight was stirring and large but did not upstage the concluding items.

Daniela Terranova’s Rainbow Dust in the Sky went in a much quieter direction with lovely feathery work from violin, cello and viola, responding in a distant way to the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

And Lisa Illean’s Cantor (After Willa Cather) setting for Cather’s poem brought just about all the players back on stage led by soprano Sheldon in a melancholy reverie of lost love.

A challenging night of music, visions and ideas.