Norm Adams and Joe Sorbara

Cellist Norm Adams (he/him) and percussionist Joe Sorbara (they/them) are organisers and performers working in Canadian creative experimental music. Having known one another for decades, they finally came together to make some music in September 2022. Since, Norm and Joe have developed a unique “tabletop” cello and percussion duo that brings their far-reaching creative minds into focus. The result is a sound world of rhythm, pitch, texture, sonority, and heart combined with a projected birds-eye-view of their performance that offers audiences a compelling perspective of dancing hands at work in the music.

Norm Adams and Joe Sorbara are passionate performers and community organisers forging their collective experience and sonic curiosities into a distinctive duo music. Their unusual stage setup offers audiences an intimate view of their work while creating a container for the musicians that challenges them to approach their instruments in new ways and pushes them to ask important questions: With “everything on the table,” quite literally, what becomes possible? What sounds can I make? What sounds are rendered unreachable?

Further, their face-to-face configuration engenders a tight physical connection such that the questions become mutual: What is possible for us in this configuration? What sounds can we make? How are they interrelated?

Finally, projections and proximity deepen the audience’s presence in the space, and so: What are the sonic possibilities for these people, in this space, in this moment? What can we find together?