Music review: Basement dressing rooms and stairwell balconies as The Tempest Project reinvents a classical concert
Music on Main’s latest creation led by David Pay guides audiences throughout the entirety of the Vancouver Playhouse for intimate performances in unexpected places
The Tempest Project. Photo by Jan Gates
Music on Main presents The Tempest Project at the Vancouver Playhouse to July 22
WHEN TICKET HOLDERS trickle into the Vancouver Playhouse the night that Music on Main is premiering The Tempest Project, the lobby is buzzing with anticipation.
Immediately upon entry, each guest is greeted by a theatre attendant bearing a glowing LED-light stick in one of six colours—red, orange, yellow, blue, green, or purple—who adorns you with a wristband that matches their light, sealing your fate for the evening. It’s safe to say this won’t be any old classical concert.
The Tempest Project’s premise, explains Music on Main’s artistic director David Pay before the show begins, is that each colour-sorted group of about 20 attendees takes a different route through the entirety of the Playhouse, stopping in different rooms along the way to witness concerts in unusual locations. Inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the roving performance explores themes of love, revenge, forgiveness, and freedom that pay homage to the 1611 play’s stormy shipwreck, magical island, and early critiques of colonialism.
Rather than taking a seat in the auditorium as usual, several groups are guided wordlessly right up onstage to form a semicircle around a troupe of musicians, all outfitted in navy jumpsuits, who have already started playing: guitarist Aram Bajakian, flutist Paolo Bortolussi, percussionist Julia Chien, zheng player Dailin Hsieh, pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, santour player Saina Khaledi, and cellist Jonathan Lo.
Looking over Hsieh’s shoulder from just a couple of feet away, we can see the precision with which she plucks her string instrument, wearing claw-like fingerpicks. Rocking a hand back and forth near the end of the zheng produces a tight, more high-pitched sound; plucking the outermost string generates a deep, reverberating note. It’s all an incredibly intimate experience right off the bat as we stand next to the performers, watching them interact off each other’s cues and feeling the power of their instruments thrum through the floor.
Musicians performing onstage at the Vancouver Playhouse in The Tempest Project. Photo by Jan Gates
As our colour-coded pods venture out into the rest of the venue, there’s plenty to see. Pushing past curtains of ivy into different hallways, we walk by paper-cluttered offices and dimly lit bathrooms. We reach out and run our fingers over white-painted concrete walls, and weave through heavy black-velvet curtains in the wings backstage, submerged in darkness. String lights and cool-toned galaxy projections situated throughout the building add much-needed theatrical interest to its abundance of industrial spaces.
The various compositions we hear throughout The Tempest Project are by Alfredo Santa Ana, Gabriel Kahane, Nancy Tam (who also doubles as sound designer), and santour player Khaledi. They merge classical Chinese, Persian, and Western music with jazz influences, creating utterly unique sound combinations.
A particularly compelling section for our group comes when we’re ushered into a dressing room with mirror-lined walls and caged-in vanity lightbulbs. Everyone takes a seat to the soft sound of rain noise, staring at our reflections in the mirrors as if we’re preparing for a performance ourselves. And that we are—Pay and Iwaasa emerge and begin circling around the room, urging us to blow wind noises with our mouths.
“Whhhhooooshhhh”, we recite in unison, scaling up and down in volume as directed. Wordlessly, they get us to rub our hands together in circular motions, making a sandy “shhhhhh” effect that doubles with our vocals to create our own a capella rain soundtrack. Then, things pick up the pace. We’re stomping our feet, banging our hands against the countertops, rattling coat hangers against wardrobe walls. It’s a cacophony of sound—a true tempest.
Elsewhere in the bowels of the theatre, vocalist Julia Ulehla, guitarist Bajakian, cellist Lo, and santour player Khaledi are seated in a circle, surrounded by dozens of flickering candles. There’s romance in the air, though the vibe veers oddly heart-wrenching as Ulehla’s vocals progress. Suddenly, the energy picks up, and Lo gives a few frantic passes to the cello, his notes reverberating through the soles of our feet. We hear him pause to take a deep breath before he’s back at it with immense passion.
The Tempest Project brought viewers to every crevice of the Vancouver Playhouse, including the lobby stairwell. Photo by Jan Gates
Another scene unfolds within the lobby’s glass-walled stairwell, overlooking zheng player Hsieh and flutist Bortolussi, who again urge us to hum and sing. Effective nods of encouragement and steady eye contact from the performers allow the audience to feel comfortable engaging in the music-making.
In yet another instance, we take a seat in the auditorium to watch pianist Iwaasa perform a lilting solo. Her dramatic notes combined with atmospheric sounds—rainfall and thunder, white noise, serpentine sighs and hisses, the distant ting of a triangle—create an incredibly sinister vibe.
There are a couple minor opening-night fumbles. As Pay introduces the show to us in the lobby, a loud thunderclap seems to strike too early, cutting him off mid-speech; and sometimes there’s uncertainty about where to stand or sit in different spaces, even on the guides’ behalf. There are also a few moments trekking from room to room where it’s easy to lose sight of your guide if you’re near the back of the pack, and the theatre’s winding staircases and narrow hallways do pose some accessibility issues (there’s an elevator onsite for those with limited mobility, though it does change the path taken quite considerably).
But these seem like small bones to pick in the end, because The Tempest Project delivers a run so incredibly enthralling that any oversights are all but forgotten. Half the show’s magic is its mystery, and we would be remiss to give away its final moments—but at the end of it all, everyone is left with a burning curiosity as to what the other groups may have experienced. It’s one of those rare instances where coming back for a second, third, or even fourth watch is not only craved, but without a doubt deserved. 
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