Camerata with Tenzin Choegyal | Adelaide Festival 2022 review

Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra was joined by Tibetan-Australian composer-musician Tenzin Choegyal for several songs.

Adelaide Festival 2022. Camerata with Tenzin Choegyal. Picture: Darren Thomas

Camerata with Tenzin Choegyal – Resonance: Chamber Landscapes

Classical Music

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL

UKARIA Cultural Centre

March 14

Camerata is the name of Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, and this was the first South Australian performance in its 35-year history. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another three decades to hear this fantastic ensemble again.

Its program combined traditional chamber works with recent music by Queensland composers and several songs composed by Tenzin Choegyal, who also appeared in this performance. Choegyal is a Tibetan-Australian musician and a long-term collaborator with Camerata. His song Dzo Mo featured infectious, dance-like 7/8 rhythms.

The expressive power of Choegyal’s voice, with its rapid vibrato and nuanced dynamic shades, was evident in both Snow Lion and Nomad Song.

John Rotar’s Apis Australis was a delightful addition to the concert. The post-minimalist first movement, with its pop-influenced harmonies and driving ostinatos, was beautifully contrasted by the lyrical second movement, At the Bottom of the Garden.

Rounding out the suite was the dynamic A Pollen Laden Zephyr, which combined frenzied, virtuosic lines with Latin dance rhythms.

The title of Nicole Murphy’s Anamnesis refers to Plato’s concept of re-remembering or recovering old knowledge from past lives. The jubilant third movement of the work explores this idea through the development of repeated motifs.

Bringing the concert to a close was Michael Patterson’s Breaza a la Camerata. The modality and harmonic language of the work harkened back to Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life: Prayer, which opened the concert.

But Patterson’s work soon evolved into a raucous affair, with improvisatory solos showing off the virtuosity of all five performers.