I’m better at playing music than keeping my website up to date, but here’s what I’m up to so far in 2024. Hope to see you at a concert or two!
- Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival – Gryphon Baryton Trio – Haydn Baryton Trios
3pm Saturday 13 January
Mechanic’s Institute, Ballarat
Trios for baryton, viola and cello by Joseph Haydn – so good!
BOOK TICKETS
- Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields – e21 – The Pleasures of Purcell
8pm Tuesday 16 January
St Patrick’s Cathedral, Ballarat
Welcome songs and choral master pieces performed by e21 directed by Stephen Grant.
BOOK TICKETS - Sydney Festival – Bach Akademie Australia
7.30pm Tuesday 23 January & 3pm Wednesday 24 January
ACO, The Neilson (The Thirsty Mile)
Sydney’s Bach Akademie Australia has established itself as the leading ensemble dedicated to performing the works of JS Bach, making it the ideal companion for the journey of Bach’s remarkable life, from beginning to end.
BOOK TICKETS - Liquid Pearls – Hannah Lane (harp) & Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba)
8pm Friday 16 February
Tempo Rubato, 34 Breese St, Brunswick
‘From her eyes, Cupid scattered liquid pearls…’.
Two of Australia’s most dynamic exponents of early music explore the intricate art of instrumental diminution and improvisation, transforming notes into liquid pearls that shimmer and resonate.Transporting you to 16th and 17th-century Italy and Spain, the duo breathes life into compositions by Cabezon, Frescobaldi, Ortiz, and Ribayaz.Immerse yourself in the sounds of baroque harp and viola da gamba, where each note cascades with grace and emotion, in a performance that transcends time.
BOOK TICKETS - La Compania – Baroque of Venice
7pm Saturday 17 February
Melbourne Recital Centre
Immerse yourself in the sumptuous and breathtaking music of the Italian masters as La Compañia takes listeners on a captivating journey to the Italian north. Performing the lavish music of Claudio Monteverdi along with the refined gems of his contemporaries, experience virtuosic songs with florid and expressive melodies dynamically woven with the new Baroque style. Joyfully adorned with masterful improvisations through their splendid period instruments, don’t miss La Compañia as they create the lush soundscape of an era that redefined musical artistry.
BOOK TICKETS
- Brunswick Beethoven Festival – Gryphon Baryton Trio
8pm Thursday 22 February
Tempo Rubato, 34 Breese St, Brunswick
Experience the beautiful and striking repertoire for baryton with my gorgeous friends Katie Yap (viola) and Josie Vains (cello) for the Beethoven Festival with The Gryphon Baryton Trio.
BOOK TICKETS
- Latitude 37 – Imitatio
5pm Sunday 24 February
The Eleventh Hour Theatre, 170 Leicester St, Fitzroy
Full of music rich in invention, innovation and vibrancy, early music favourites Latitude 37 explore the wealth of the Baroque imagination in a programme brimming with fantasy and affect.. The 17th century was the birthplace of instrumental music as an artform in its own right, and virtuoso player-composers such as Heinrich Biber, Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Schmelzer left a legacy of sonatas revelling in the possibilities of the violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord.
BOOK TICKETS - Les Voix Humaines – Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba) & Donald Nicolson (harpsichord)
7.30pm Wednesday 28 February
Hanson Dyer Hall, The Ian Potter Southbank Centre
43 Sturt St Southbank
Within the glittering court of Louis XIV, Marin Marais shone as one of the greatest masters of the queen of instruments, the viola da gamba. This programme displays the dazzling variety of compositions Marais created, from improvisatory preludes, delicate laments and lascivious sarabands through to his magnificent set of variations on La Folia. François Couperin nicknamed le Grand was admired across Baroque Europe as the finest French keyboardist, from a family of musicians who worked in Paris for over 200 years. His pieces in his suites for harpsichord (called ordres) range from playful to melancholic, sometimes enigmatic but always original.
BOOK TICKETS
- Music She Wrote Festival – Latitude 37 – The Phoenix and the Queen
8pm Friday 22 March
Tempo Rubato, 34 Breese St, Brunswick
Baroque music mavens Latitude 37 delve into memories of music from the past by a doomed queen, a brilliant nun and a child prodigy who blossomed as a gifted composer. Complemented by new music created through a 17th-century filter by Brooke Green, The Phoenix and the Queen shares music by Ann Boleyn, Isabella Leonarda and Elisabeth Jaquet de la Guerre with the dulcet and delicate sounds of the baroque violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord.
BOOK TICKETS - Melbourne Baroque Orchestra – J. S. Bach St Matthew Passion
3pm Sunday 24 March
Alexander Theatre, Monash University, Clayton
MBO joins Polyphonic Voices, Australian Boys Choir, The Choir of Trinity College, and stellar soloists including David Greco, Christopher Watson, Nicholas Dinopoulos and Andrew Goodwin, all under the direction of Michael Fulcher.
BOOK TICKETS - Consortium Viols – Víkingur Ólafsson & Consortium
7.30pm Monday 25 March
Melbourne Recital Centre
Comprising Australia’s finest viol players, Consortium performs a rich and evocative program featuring Dowland, Weelkes, Byrd and more – a stirring pathway into Víkingur Ólafsson’s immersive interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
BOOK TICKETS - Melbourne Symphony Orchestra – J. S. Bach St John Passion
7.30pm Sunday 6 April
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Wrapping up MSO’s Baroque Festival is this special 300th Anniversary performance of Bach’s oratorio of biblical proportions – St John Passion.Lauded for his ability to amplify a work’s immediacy and drama, Stephen Layton – former Music Director at Trinity College Cambridge and founder of world-leading London consort Polyphony – conducts the orchestra for this historic concert, alongside the mighty MSO chorus and an all-star cast of soloists.
BOOK TICKETS - Lyrebird Music Society – Gryphon Baryton Trio
2pm Sunday 7 April
Wyselaskie Auditorium, 29 College Crescent, Parkville
Experience more beautiful and striking repertoire for baryton with my gorgeous friends Katie Yap (viola) and Josie Vains (cello) for the Lyrebird Music Society with The Gryphon Baryton Trio.
BOOK TICKETS - Ensemble Pompadour – Lady Pompadour’s Parlour
8pm Thursday 16 May
Tempo Rubato, 34 Breese St, Brunswick
Simon Rickard, musette
Nick Pollock, theorbo
Laura Vaughan, viola da gamba
Music of excessive gorgeousness and gorgeous excess from pre-Revolution Versailles by Corette, Boismortier, Marais, St Colombe and Robert de Visée.
BOOK TICKETS - Pinchgut Opera – Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas
30 May, 1, 2 & 3 June
City Recital Centre, Sydney
Dido and Aeneas features some of the most beautiful Baroque music of all time, including the final lament of Dido, darkly brooding and famously tragic, which was aptly featured in the final season of the HBO smash-hit series The White Lotus. Musically resplendent and thrillingly fierce, Pinchgut’s presentation of Dido and Aeneas is not to be missed.
BOOK TICKETS - Genesis Baroque – Telemann Paris Quartets
22 June – Wesley of Warragul
23 June – St John’s Anglican Church, Flinders
25 June – The Eleventh Hour Theatre, Fitzroy
I’ll be joining my friends at Genesis Baroque for these performances of some of my favourite music – Paris Quartets by Telemann. Love this stuff!
BOOK TICKETS - Latitude 37 – La Chemise Blanche
5pm Sunday 14 July
The Eleventh Hour Theatre, 170 Leicester St, Fitzroy
PARIS- a hotbed of musical creativity for centuries, home to extremes of elegance, formality, whimsy and eccentricity. Baroque connoisseurs Latitude 37 have crafted an immersive hour bringing Paris to The Eleventh Hour Theatre in Fitzroy, with sophisticated music by François Couperin, Marin Marais andJean-Féry Rebel, interspersed with some French surprises!
BOOK TICKETS - Adelaide Baroque Orchestra – An Ungrateful Instrument
20-21 July
Burnside Town Hall, 401 B26, Tusmore
I‘An ungrateful instrument’ is the title of award- winning Adelaide author, Michael Meehan’s latest book. It is a novel of many themes but central is the struggle between Baroque musicians Antoine Forqueray and his son Jean- Baptiste, perhaps the greatest instrumentalists of their day and both in their times child prodigies to the court of Louis XIV.
We take the music of those two protagonists and the court of Louis XIV, one of the richest epochs of French music in any age with selections from Lully, Couperin, Charpentier and Marais to illuminate readings from the book by Michael.
Set in the art deco interior of Burnside Ballroom, graphic visual artist Dave Court will produce a series of dramatic and interactive projections, bringing a third creative vision to the project.
BOOK TICKETS - Pinchgut Opera – Eternal Light
24 & 25 August
City Recital Centre, Sydney
Eternal Light is a celebration of the power of one of the most famous pieces of Baroque vocal writing: Allegri’s Miserere. Tracing a journey from the Sistine Chapel (where Allegri’s masterpiece was exclusively heard) to Salzburg, we bookend our performance of the F-minor Requiem by Franz Biber and instrumental music by his mentor, Johann Schmelzer, with two versions of the Miserere: one reconstructed to sound as it did in Allegri’s day, the other in the version familiar to us today, with its glorious – but mis-transcribed high Cs.Immerse yourself in the exquisite textures and tones of Australia’s most celebrated chorus, Cantillation, along with the assured and expert Baroque specialists of the Orchestra of the Antipodes, for this sublime presentation of transcendent works of sheer beauty and brilliance
BOOK TICKETS - Pinchgut Opera – Handel’s Julius Ceasar
21-27 November
City Recital Centre, Sydney
One of the most famous Baroque operas of all time, Julius Caesar is an irresistible blend of passion and intrigue, the perfect vehicle for Handel’s dramatic genius. Celebrated Australian director Neil Armfield makes his return to the Pinchgut stage, with a spectacular cast and creative team to bring a fresh perspective to Handel’s masterpiece.
BOOK TICKETS