So here I am standing in the northernmost cathedral in Europe staring up into the face of an elephant. The Nidarosdomen, in the Norwegian city of Trondheim, is a miracle of 12th-century stonemasonry, festooned with gargoyles of every possible shape: goats, monkeys, dogs, dragons… and extremely cute elephants. If Pixar ever designed a Gothic cathedral, this is what it would look like. The Nidarosdomen is my first stop on a quick sightseeing jaunt around Trondheim before the annual Chamber Music Festival gets started tonight. Guest of honour and composer in residence: our own Brett Dean. His face is plastered around the town on billboards and posters, and I can’t help feeling a flush of national pride. Our boy has definitely made good. But before the Festival begins – and I’ll talk about the musical delights later – I’m captivated by the beauty of this scrupulously conserved little Nordic town. Architecture here is piously lo-fi: one- and two-storey weatherboard buildings with ornate casement windows, all painted in pastel greens, yellows, pinks… In the city centre, the only flat bit, these dolls’ houses cram the cobbled laneways, while the wide boulevards are lined with the elegant fin-de-siècle apartment buildings that are standard…

Exhibiting their unique mastery of the instrument were two of Australia’s most charismatic piano wizards – Ross Bolleter and Anthony Pateras – as well as visiting UK virtuoso Mark Gasser. The three together provided the musical fabric with which this tapestry was woven, adorning it with colours that were by turn stark and subtle, explosive and delicate. First to seduce the audience was Bolleter with his wistful and contemplative Daughters of Time. Performed on three of the five old, ruined pianos that reside in Bolleter’s kitchen, this lengthy work plays like a homage to the passage of time. Seated on the floor with the three pianos towering over him – one in front and the remaining two flanking him on either side – Bolleter works the three instruments like an acoustic mixing desk. He passes from one to the other, at times plucking strings on one piano with the right hand and striking keys on another with the left, then shifting his position to reach the highest notes of one piano with his left hand and the highest notes of the third piano with his right, his arms barely able to stretch the distance. The pianos are in themselves worthy…

I was unaware, last night, that my descent into the underground of Perth’s new State Theatre Centre would be like a free fall into the viscera of an untamed sonic universe. I had glanced only nonchalantly at the concert program; Gérard Grisey’s Le Noir de L’Étoile (literally “The Black of the Star”) performed by Melbourne-based Speak Percussion. I had heard vague whispers of an odd seating arrangement, with audience members on the floor in the middle of the performance space, encircled by the six musicians like some organic surround sound system. Yet at this stage it was all academic to me; mere words on a page, scattered hearsay. It hit me when the lights went down. A deep-voiced narrator begins to speak, his accent tinged with a Germanic wistfulness. His tone is dry yet warm, and he speaks of distant cosmic spaces, of supernovae, of pulsating neutron stars. And as simply as that, the context is set. The spell is cast. As the voice fades, the primordial rumbling of a bass drum warns of an impending darkness, a force both sinister and organic, capable of untold destruction, yet born of the earliest stirrings of cosmic matter. The sound swells imperceptibly,…

When I was at school, in art class, from the start of Year 7 we were encouraged to create our own masterpieces. It is odd then, as a professional musician, that I have never written a work that has been performed in a concert setting. Last year when we were selecting the songs for our concert Brighton to Bondi, we decided we really needed a work to pull the concept of the concert together but also bring all the performing elements into one piece. Unable to find a piece about the English/Australian connection that involved piano, organ, large choir and youth chorus, I decided to write one! In the foyer of the Sofitel Hotel in New York over quite a few cups of average coffee, I sketched the outline for my piece Brighton to Bondi, which features words from New Zealand poet Tim Jones. His poem seemed like the perfect text for my piece. Tuesday Poem: Impertinent To Sailors Curved over islands, the world dragged me south in a talkative year slipping Southampton as the band played a distant farewell. It was better than steerage, that assisted passage: ten pound Poms at sixpence the dozen, promenading in sun frocks, gathering…

Forgive this somewhat delayed reaction. Packing, flying and the vacation-like inertia which Florida weather tends to inspire have all conspired to mute my blogging urge just recently. Since last I wrote, I’ve changed cities twice — from Santa Fe to Orlando (for a much needed week of unpacking and sitting still) and from Orlando to Hong Kong, where The Tenor in My Life will sing two performances of Das Lied von der Erde at the end of the week. As it turns out, it’s even more hot and humid here than in Florida, but inertia must be fought and I’ve been meaning to write this entry for several weeks. I think what I have to share is still worth sharing. Basically I just wanted to spread the world about a wonderful show I saw in Santa Fe — probably one of the most obscure obscurities I’ve ever seen, but an opera which, at least based on what I saw in Santa Fe, deserves to be better known. The opera in question? Menotti’s The Last Savage. No, I hadn’t heard of it either, at least not until I knew I was going to Santa Fe and checked out their season. It’s……

The Proms is a grand tradition: a 116-year-old annual series of classical music concerts; a quintessentially English institution aimed at bringing music to the masses. I am an idiot: a 35-year-old hack musician, unable to sight-read or even play the same thing twice; an emphatically Australian artist who aims to mock the grand institutions of the masses. Grand tradition and idiot will be combined this Saturday night, on the occasion of the first-ever BBC Comedy Prom. I have managed in recent years to stumble upon a lovely and fun career by getting onstage and saying whatever I like in whatever form I enjoy. And what I like to say is often “motherfucker” and “pope” and “cancer” and “cheese” (among many more esoteric appellations), and the form I enjoy is often disco or funk or beat poetry or shouting. So you can understand why I am quietly shocked that people choose to buy tickets and watch me at all. But more surprising has been my slow a-/de-scent into the very bosom of my adopted home’s apparently conservative establishment. In the last year, I have written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, toured with the Sydney Symphony, and performed at the Royal Albert…

For its 2012 season, the company has assembled an unparalleled collection of warhorses, and they’re champing at the bit, ready to gallop forth next January and start securing full houses. So if the tried and true repertoire favourites are your cup of tea, you are in for a treat. If you like the occasional challenge or rarity, if you’re interested in contemporary opera, Australian works, Baroque repertoire or Russian or Czech opera — 2012 may be tough going for you. With just a couple of exceptions, next year’s season is all about Opera’s Greatest Hits. So let’s hit the trail with those horses, and see what 2012 has to offer. New leadership The 2012 season is the first entirely programmed by Lyndon Terracini. In interviews after his appointment, Terracini implied that he had plans to épater le bourgeois a bit with some unconventional repertoire choices, but evidently the new administration has ultimately opted for security over daring, this year at least. Maybe a more individual stamp will come later — some of us, myself included, were rather looking forward to having an enfant terrible in the tob job — but for now, Terracini seems set on securing the company’s finances and…

Since 1957, the company has a run a summer festival, staging repertoire favourites alongside obscurities and modern works — including its own commissions — and doing it all in the open air, amid insanely gorgeous mountain views. I tell you, I’ve been in this town just over three weeks, and I still can’t get over those views. Nor can I (or anyone) get away from them. Look out a window, turn a corner, drive down a road and yet another ridiculously photogenic landscape opens up. I grew up in New Zealand, I’m used to first-rate scenery, but the expanse and the majesty and the colours of the land here are just extraordinary. Even the clouds look like they were produced by Pixar. I can’t stop taking photos. It’s irresistible scenery, so it’s hardly surprising that when John Crosby set up an opera company here, they made it an open-air affair. The present-day theatre is the third on the site, and like its predecessor, is open not just at the sides, but also at the rear of the stage, so that you can look past the set and into the sunset. Performances don’t start till 8.30 or 9pm — any earlier…

In November 2007, my mind was firmly on Scrabble as I prepared to compete in the national team tournament held annually in Malaysia. Swapping anagrams in Kuala Lumpur with a jovial carload of players from Australia, Malaysia and Canada, the last thing I expected to hear was a radio trailer announcing the presence in KL that very evening of a certain Australian jazz a cappella quartet of which I am a longtime fan. We all duly attended The Idea of North’s gig – a nice relaxed one, as I recall – and ended up chatting to the group for a good hour or two afterwards. I’d expected a cappella anecdotes, but alto Naomi Crellin and tenor Nick Begbie both turned out to be avid Scrabble players with far better knowledge of the game than the average punter. I’m not sure who was more surprised by the turn of events, but we weren’t short of conversation that evening. Humility and level-headedness off the stage, self-deprecating wit on: those qualities, valuable in anyone making any kind of music, have surely helped over many years to raise The Idea of North to a level where stellar is standard. The SATB quartet has a…

Sitting on my desk at the moment is a white coffee mug displaying the slogan “I SURVIVED THE CURSE  OF THE GOTHIC”. It’s one of my proudest possessions. Not only does it effectively hold green tea without burning my hands, it’s also a pleasing reminder of one of the most exhilarating musical experiences I’ve ever had. And on Sunday night, the Melbourne International Film Festival is even hosting the premiere of a documentary about the experience. But to put the film and the mug in perspective, I have to start the story about six years ago… I’d started work at radio station 4MBS Classic FM in Brisbane when one day, out of the blue, the station’s general manager Gary Thorpe wandered out of his office and plopped an oversized musical score onto my desk. “Have I told you about The Gothic?” he asked, and regaled me with an intriguing story about an unusual music project that had captivated (or haunted) him for so long. Gary’s a quiet, reserved man, a vegan non-drinker, so his only vice seems to be music – particularly the music of obscure 20th-century composers. Like Havergal Brian. Ever heard of Havergal? If not, you’re not alone….

Conal Coad as La Roche in Capriccio. (Photo: Branco Gaica) Capriccio is something of a connoisseur’s opera, in terms of both music and subject matter. What do you love about it, and what do you find challenging? Capriccio‘s most challenging aspect for me is probably the subject matter. On first acquaintance, one thinks that it could so easily bore the pants off the audience. It is such an un-operatic opera. There is no death, gore, wronged hero or heroine, not even the ‘slap and tickle’ of a Baron Ochs  - simply a polite and elegant house party discussing whether the words or music in opera are more important. Such restraint on the operatic stage is certainly challenging. However, what I love about the piece appears as you start to inhabit your role, and discover how cleverly constructed this work is… How funny, and how beautiful. (Tougher for you who haven’t a part to sing, but this is an opera that will pay big dividends for the pupils who do their homework!) The libretto is  extremely funny and one soon becomes aware that being a guest at this particular salon would have been a delicious afternoon. More importantly it is the music…

Today the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition moved into the beautiful and acoustically superb setting of the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Hall. I’d flown down from Sydney to check out the piano trio finals. After a week of intense competition and eliminations, the final three groups left standing were the Rhodes Piano Trio (UK), Trio Paul Klee (France) and Trio Rafale (Switzerland). Rafale were up first with an intriguing program opening with Wolfgang Rihm’s short work Fremde Szene III. Haunting and evocative, the performance sustained an atmosphere of unbelievable tension from beginning to end. Following this we were treated to tonight’s first of two renditions of Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor. Well and truly focused and “in the zone”, the ensemble produced an excellent, well-balanced sound. For a trio founded as recently as mid-2008, the players produced a luscious and captivating blend. Commentary during the invterval rightly labelled their sound “full” and “quartet-like”. Up next was Trio Paul Klee from France. Rafale’s Ravel was a tough act to follow with a repeat of the same work, and the Paul Klees certainly could have benefitted from another short work to open their program. In my opinion it wasn’t…