Quintessentially quink

Colombo music lovers will be in for a treat this festive season with the performance of the widely acclaimed capella group Quink - a Dutch band of five professional singers, whose performance in Colombo on Tuesday 5 December at 7pm at the British School auditorium, a part of their Asia Tour, promises to be an evening of sheer sensory delight. The Ensemble is being sponsored by the British School in Colombo, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Commercial Bank of Ceylon and MIT Cargo (Pvt) Ltd.

Quink comprises five professional singers from the Netherlands who have developed a unique sound that allows them to illustrate with style and expressiveness the great variety of a cappella music.

Cappella music is vocal music or singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. A cappella is Italian in the style of the chapel; the term is due to the fact that Christian churches sang without instrumental accompaniment for the first several hundred years of their existence. In modern parlance, the term applies to vocal performers who refrain from performing with any instrumental accompaniment, though some emulate the sonority of instruments with their voices and microphone effects.

Arrangements of popular music for a small cappella ensembles typically include one voice singing the lead melody, one singing a rhythmic bass line, and the remaining voices contributing chordal or polyphonic accompaniment.

Quink's repertoire varies widely and consists of a cappella music of Renaissance and Baroque as well as works by Romantic composers. Moreover, the ensemble often performs folk songs and close harmony arrangements and it concludes its performances with lighter audience-pleasing pieces