Hailing from Vancouver, a 12-member professional vocal ensemble is in the Yukon for a series of a cappella performances.

Calling themselves Musica Intima, the group will play a Whitehorse Concerts performance Saturday evening at the Yukon Arts Centre and the next day will appear at the Odd Fellows Hall in Dawson City.

On Thursday, Musica Intima staged three sold-out shows for students at the arts centre. They are also available for workshops and private lessons contact Whitehorse Concerts for more information.

The ensemble's members fall into four categories: Sopranos, singing the highest parts, include Joanna Dundas, Katherine Goheen and Siri Olesen; altos Melanie Adams, Marianne de Kleer and Caitlin McRae; tenors Carman Price, Lane Price and Jonathan Quick; and basses Peter Alexander, Matthew MacTavish and Michael Mori.

'We have a good mix of folk songs and modern repertoire,' Mori said in an interview earlier this week.

'We like to present a wide variety, so there's something for people to recognize and hear and stuff that we can present from the modern music world to peak people's interest.'

Of particular note are compositions by Canadian composer Murray Schafer.

'He's written a set of three hymns which aren't necessarily Christian hymns, but they embrace a spirituality that's universal for any religion,' said Mori. 'He also wrote a set called Magic Songs, and they're inspired by the indigenous people of Canada's North.

'(Schafer)'s created soundscapes that are made to sound like invoking the spirits of the animals and describing how they sound. It's all very progressive that still has a storytelling way of it, even though there's no words.'

For many members of the ensemble, including Mori, this is the first time visiting the Yukon.

'It's all new for us,' he said. 'We're proud to see cities like Dawson and Whitehorse, which we've heard about but have never been to hopefully, we'll see some northern lights.'

Originally from a small town in the Okanagan region of B.C., Mori said his first impressions of the Yukon were that it reminded him of home.

'We're also going to sing some compositions and arrangements by members in the group and some traditional Scottish folk songs and some southern American spirituals,' he said.

The way the group is organized is based on an expansion of the stringed quartet, but with voices rather than instruments.

'Stringed quartets are not conducted and that's a hallmark of our group,' said Mori. 'There's very few groups in the world, that are considered professional, that have no musical director.

'What we have are 12 musical directors, so each piece will be taken by a different person and that person will lead it through rehearsals and during the performance.'

Simple corral music has four parts. Complex corral music can have up to 12 parts, though usually it doesn't go more than eight parts due to the difficulty of having everyone singing something different.

'It's the bare minimum for a large choir and it's the most we can do though to expand from a quartet setting, to keep it intimate,' said Mori. 'And therein lies the name, Musica Intima.

'We like to think of us as a very close-knit group which can present things in a way that's not just a shocking wall of sound, but the nuance of the really quiet moments and bringing out the words and the harmony is really important as best as possible.'

Mori stressed all of the music us sung a cappella without accompaniment of any kind.

'I really like the I Thank You God by American composer Eric Whittaker because the cords are so lush,' he said, noting this spiritual work to be his favourite piece. 'You have 12 people singing, creating these massive chords.

'It's something people aren't expecting to hear people are always asking if there was some sort of recording playing in the background because the overtones created by the 12 singers singing are outside of the notes we're singing sometimes.'

Traditionally, Musica Intima performs three concert series a year in Vancouver, one concert tour in B.C. and one tour outside B.C.

'Last year, we decided we wanted to take the next step and become more of an international ensemble,' said Mori.

This year, they have contracts to sing in Copenhagen, Connecticut and Quebec, in addition to their standard series. This summer, they performed in Quebec, the Maritimes and Ontario and have plans to tour Ireland in April.

A graduate of the Bachelor of Music program at UBC in Vancouver, B.C. Mori has been with Musica Intima for three years.

'It's the best musicianship I've ever worked with, and that includes having sung with the Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Symphony and various groups,' he said.

'The dedication to musicianship is such an amazing thing with this group and that's what we like to share.

'We have a core of 12 people that are always striving to improve and are always kept in check by someone else.'

Samples of the group's music can be heard on their website at musicaintima.org.

'We like to keep it really tight, specifically because the music's so difficult,' added Mori. 'We want to make it sound easy so everyone has to be totally prepared, and that's the hallmark of the group, that we can make everything super-polished.'