Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

A voice, a piano, a salon setting in a private home… It could be Schubert circa 1826, but add a percussionist and fresh new sounds and it’s Summer 2026. The heart of the program is drawn from Pascal Dusapin’s O Mensch! – a song cycle to words by Nietzsche. It’s theatrical in spirit, but in this intimate performance, Mitch Riley and Jack Symonds bring the intense emotions and compelling musical gestures home. These long-time Sydney Chamber Opera collaborators also join forces for the creation of an evocative new work, I keep your burning glances, based on a Michelangelo text, and Mitch has written the lyric for A Vision of Purple by Hatched Composer alumnus Alexander Maltas. The Berceuse from The Exterminating Angel is no ordinary lullaby – in the words of its dedicatee, it’s lascivious, morbid and very beautiful. Vanessa Lann’s Floating Sky offers balance with a shimmering, meditative sound world. And the program is completed with music that Claire and Jack have long wanted to perform: an austerely delicate excerpt from Harrison Birtwistle’s Axe Manual – a study in rhythm and colour. Take a front-row seat for this concert of visions, memories and music that speaks to the soul.

Featured non-Australian music: Thomas Adès: Berceuse from The Exterminating Angel; Harrison Birtwistle: Excerpt from The Axe Manual; Pascal Dusapin: Selected songs from O Mensch!; Vanessa Lann: Floating Sky

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website

Featured Australian Works

I keep your burning glances : for baritone, piano and percussion (2025) by Jack Symonds

Featured artists

• Music of Alexander Maltas
• Presented by Ensemble Offspring