BY MARTIN CHENEY
The A Cappella Academy
Adelaide Chamber Singers, Festival Statesmen Chorus, The Gesualdo Six, Aurora Vocal Ensemble
UKARIA Cultural Centre, 26 March
It’s almost criminal that the vast majority of South Australians were doing literally anything other than what I was doing at 2.30pm that Sunday. I witnessed a showcase of musical excellence, programming ingenuity and endearing humility that, aside from being merely impressive, caused me to feel more proud of the South Australian musical landscape than at just about any other time in my career.
A packed house at UKARIA Cultural Centre in Mount Barker was treated to the culmination of several days of workshops and rehearsals led by The A Cappella Academy founder and director, and former member of The King’s Singers, Timothy Wayne-Wright, and this year’s Artist-in-Residence The Gesualdo Six (affectionately referred to as G6 throughout the concert, purely as an abbreviation — I don’t believe they share a fondness for that chord in particular).
The participating choirs consisted of the Adelaide Chamber Singers and Aurora Vocal Ensemble pictured above (both directed by Christie Anderson, one of Adelaide’s most valuable and well-respected choral advocates) and the Festival Statesmen Chorus (directed by founder Jonathan Bligh, himself a member of the Adelaide Chamber Singers and highly sought-after vocal technician). I was rendered teary on multiple occasions throughout the groups’ performances — we are obscenely lucky to be able to call them “local”.
The opening piece was a collaboration between ACS and G6 on The Wings of the Wind composed by The Gesualdo Six’s director and bass Owain Park. Twenty-nine-year-old Owain’s career achievements would be remarkable if he were three times his own age, and his mature and assured compositional voice makes me even more incredulous that he isn’t. The sonorous marriage of these two groups was heavenly — their combined power forced me backwards in my seat until a gorgeously restrained middle section featuring a sublime and sensitive solo from soprano Brooke Window. At its conclusion, Christie remarked that G6’s sheer vocal strength had caused her glasses to fog up in an earlier rehearsal. I believe her.
(As an aside, I noted in the program that Owain is the principal guest conductor of the BBC Singers. It seems entirely fitting that today’s concert, which featured a handful of his own works, was the very next day after the BBC reversed its baffling initial decision to disband this critically important group.)
The remainder of ACS’ own set was a cavalcade of unwavering mastery of every perceivable musical facet; unsurprising given its world-class status, but no less staggering to behold. Australian composer Joe Twist’s perennial choral staple setting of Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep followed the Owain composition, and they made typically short work of its subtle harmonic and metric shifts. I was absolutely delighted to hear Welsh composer Paul Mealor’s name mentioned next, as I have yet to be able to listen to his lush and meditative Ubi Caritas (written for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in 2011) without getting misty-eyed. This pattern remains unbroken. Their final piece, Z. Randall Stroope’s We Beheld Once Again the Stars, might as well have been composed with the Adelaide Hills panorama in mind, its soaring simplicity and Morten Lauridsen-esque harmonic rumination the perfect accompaniment to UKARIA’s striking backdrop.
Before The Gesualdo Six took to the stage to sing its own set before interval, Timothy Wayne-Wright regaled us with an anecdote from his King’s Singers days that caused me to have somewhat of an out-of-body experience. It involved a producer on one of their tours in Germany taking them to a Mexican restaurant for lunch, which resulted in the subsequent matinee performance of Paul McCartney’s Blackbird being, shall we say, undermined. The story would have been hilarious enough on its own, but a former member of The King’s Singers imitating the sound of breaking wind with all the seriousness of a Renaissance motet was not something I had on my bingo card for 2023. Funnier still, the whole purpose of the yarn seemed to purely be a reason to say, “and on that note…” before introducing G6. The UKARIA audience was uniformly in stitches, making the already invested and engaged crowd like putty in his hands.
The ridiculous soon gave way to the sublime with the concert’s highlight, G6’s exquisite performance of Eleanor Daley’s Grandmother Moon. The gentlemen’s sense of ensemble is unparalleled, both in their homogenous phrasing and immaculate blend. I’m quite sure I’ve never heard more unwaveringly consistent intonation in my life. The remainder of their set included Palestrina’s Io Son Ferito, Ahi Lasso, Gerda Blok-Wilson’s O Little Rose, O Dark Rose and Ligeti’s The Lobster Quadrille, just in case we suspected there was a genre of choral music they were incapable of mastering. We would, of course, have been proven wrong.
Owain had previously hinted that their understanding of the emotional trajectory of a song was as important as their technical rehearsal. This was clearly evidenced by their ability to craft a discernible dramatic arc in Palestrina’s work (translated as I am wounded, alas) without the audience knowing the exact meaning of the text. It was quite remarkable.
After interval, the Aurora Vocal Ensemble filled the stage and performed a beautifully controlled arrangement of Bright Morning Stars, unconducted, followed by Dan Forrest’s The Sun Never Says. Christie’s confident direction was on full display in their performance of Duruflé’s Tota pulchra es, its harmonically rich polyphony an easy meal for this effortlessly proficient group.
Aurora’s collaboration with The Gesualdo Six came in the form of Owain’s piece Night Prayer, a live version of a work initially composed to be performed in isolation over Zoom during COVID. The result was a tremendously moving aleatoric effect of interweaving voices spread throughout the UKARIA auditorium, each entry seemingly bearing no relevance to another, hearkening back to a time in the not-very-distant past where this was the only kind of piece that could be meaningfully rehearsed in real time. Aurora’s final performance was Finnish composer Mia Makaroff’s stirring Spes (Hope), an entwining of text from Ecclesiastes and Sámi writer Nils-Aslak Valkeapää.
The Festival Statesmen Chorus closed the concert with its own set, arguably showcasing the widest variety of styles overall, with performances ranging from Schubert’s Die Nacht to Elvis Presley’s (Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear, featuring a charmingly playful solo from Cam DuRieu, ably backed by his doo-wop Statesmen.
Owain’s When Love Speaks, his setting of the words of Shakespeare, had its Australian premiere with this particular arrangement for the FSC’s collaboration with G6, not unlike their ensuing performance of Billy Joel’s And So It Goes in its homophonic, hymn-like and intimate treatment of the material. The Statesmen concluded the concert with the Herculean feat of selling the inclusion of Alan Menken’s Go the Distance alongside William Byrd’s Terra tremuit, a feat that only a group at its level of endearing sincerity and showmanship could conquer.
As a parting gift for the deeply appreciative and adoring audience, The Gesualdo Six, Adelaide Chamber Singers, Aurora Vocal Ensemble, and Festival Statemen Chorus united for a final performance of Bob Chilcott’s uplifting earworm We Are, a joyful setting of the words of Maya Angelou, reminding us that we are “more alike than we are unalike” — the near-spontaneous standing ovation at its conclusion echoed the sentiment as precisely as the magnificent artists before us had performed it.
In his opening remarks, Timothy Wayne-Wright mentioned that the general theme of the programmed repertoire was “revival, rebirth, and renewal”. The same turned out to be true of the concert itself — those of us lucky enough to be in the room were given, quite literally, a glimpse of the future of choral music in Australia and abroad.
The Gesualdo Six are Owain Park, Guy James, Joseph Wicks, Joshua Cooter, Michael Craddock and Samuel Mitchell.
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If you like, you can say thanks to Martin for his contribution to Australian arts journalism. No amount too much or little 🙂
Images supplied. Credit Dylan Henderson.
