Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

Experience an evening of music that is intimate and unexpectedly moving.

Praised for her ‘mesmerising emotional truth’ (The Australian), acclaimed vocalist Jane Sheldon and Rubiks Collective explore what it means to love, hope, and navigate an increasingly complex world.

Featuring three bold works by leading contemporary composers, Laura Bowler's award-winning ‘Wicked Problems’ pairs voice and bass flute in a meditation on humanity's greatest challenges, and our narrow odds of getting them right. David Lang's ‘How to Pray’ draws on the psalms, an atheist's take on the shape of prayer, its rhythms, its pacing, and its quiet hope for an answer. Thomas Meadowcroft's ‘Love Songs without Subjects’ sets French philosopher Lacan's writing on love and desire, threading unlikely pairs through its vocal line, ‘Dido's Lament’ beside ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,’ ‘Michelle’ beside ‘My Funny Valentine.’

Anchored by the beautiful and instantly recognisable lament bass sequence, the ensemble creates the slowly descending Shepard tone effect – always falling, never landing. Rather like love. Tackling love, religion, climate change and the agony of uncertainty, experience an evening of music that is searching, intimate and unexpectedly moving.

Program:

david lang - how to pray 

Laura Bowler - Wicked Problems

Thomas Meadowcroft - Love Songs without Subjects

Featured non-Australian music: David Lang - How to Pray ; Laura Bowler - Wicked Problems.

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

Featured artists

• Music of Thomas Meadowcroft