featuring the world premiere of Sarah Elise Thompson’s ‘untitled’ (2019) for vocal octet*

*commissioned by The Song Company

In a bold attempt to paint the state of the current Australian compositional landscape, nineteen composers have been asked to fill a segment of time with sounds that draw on the rich heritage of The Song Company’s first 35 years and look forward to the countless possibilities of the human voice – using all 163 symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet and beyond. These nineteen commissions are set against fragments of art music from the last thousand years, and together form a dialogue about the nature of vocal music and the deepest form of musical expression.

New works by Alice Chance, Aristea Mellos, Bernie Van Tiel & Rex Le, Chris Williams, Colin Black, Dan Walker, Elizabeth Sheppard, Felicity Wilcox, Gordon Hamilton, Josephine Gibson, Lyle Chan, Matthew Hindson, Naomi Crellin, Natalie Maschmeyer, Owen Elsley, Sally Whitwell, Sarah Elise Thompson, Sonya Holowell, and Stephen Adams. Western music from the last 12 centuries is represented by Kassiani, Anonymous, Guido d'Arezzo, Hildegard of Bingen, Adam de la Halle, Guillaume de Machaut, John Dunstaple, William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Johann Sebastian Bach, Anton Bruckner, and Igor Stravinsky.