Welcome to the February edition of Australian Accent, Limelight’s unashamedly parochial monthly round-up of the Australian music being played on our concert stages and in our recital halls.

Got a premiere to puff? A piece getting a repeat performance? Email editors@limelight-arts.com.au for inclusion in next month’s round-up (subject to editorial discretion).

We’ve also have a week-by-week breakdown of the works being performed on our Instagram for something a little more digestible.

Touring

Omega Ensemble. Photo © Saskia Wilson

Omega Ensemble kicks off its season with Starburst in Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne (12–18 February). It takes its name from  Jessie Montgomery’s bite-sized string orchestra work but also on the program is Lachlan Skipworth’s A Turning Sky for trumpet and clarinet, with SSO Principal Trumpet David Elton and OE Artistic Director David Rowden in the spotlight.

Sydney-based Ensemble Offspring is also on the road. Kicking off in Glebe in Sydney ahead of dates in Melbourne EO’s Summer program (28 February – 5 March) features a new work (I keep your burning glances) by Jack Symonds and 2024 Hatched Academy participant Alexander Maltas’s A Vision of Purple.

Baroque ensemble Bach Akademie Australia and The Song Company are uniting to present seven of J.S. Bach’s vocal motets alongside two contemporary works by Australian composer Sandra Milliken and Scotsman Sir James MacMillan. Performances take place at St John’s Southgate, Melbourne (5 February), Wollongong Art Gallery (6 February), Mosman Art Gallery (8 February), St James Church, Sydney (12 February) and Bowral Memorial Hall (13 February). Bookings here.

Playing at the Melbourne Recital Centre on 25 February and at Elder Hall, Adelaide on 28 February (part of the 2026 Adelaide Festival), the Brodsky Quartet meets master yidaki artist William Barton for a musical dialogue between traditions that includes works by Peter Sculthorpe
 (his String Quartet No.11, Jabiru Dreaming), Robert Davidson
 (Minjerribah), Andrew Ford
 (String Quartet No.7, Eden Ablaze) and Barton’s own 
Square Circles Beneath the Red Desert Sand.

New South Wales

Alexandra Spence. Portrait supplied

Developed over three years across residencies, tours, and periods of deep listening, Your Whistle Tells of Landscape finds Australian sound artist Alexandra Spence continuing her investigations into the perceptual entanglements of sound, place, memory, and imagination. Spence performs the work – recently released as an album – on 5 February at Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale. Entry free with tickets allocated by ballot. Enter here.

Hourglass Ensemble celebrates love and nature for their Valentine concert on 7 February. Alongside Debussy are the works Valentine by Katy Abbott; Dolcissimo Uscignolo by Paul Stanhope; The Strawberry Thief by Sally Greenaway; Navegar by Daniel Rojas and Elegy for a Dying Planet by Kristofer Spike.

On 19 February at Killara Uniting Church, Phoenix Collective play a program featuring A Love Worth Fighting For by Ella Macens.

And on 20 February, over in Bowral, the Highlands Music Collective offers an all-Australian program entitled Australian Prism. It features the world premiere of Sally Greenaway’s Imogen alongside works by Stuart Greenbaum, Andrew Ford, Anne Cawrse, Nigel Westlake, Elena Kats-Chernin and Paul Nicolaou, who also features as a performer.

Life Forms is the latest album from award-winning trumpeter Niran Dasika and his Melbourne-based trio featuring pianist Andrea Keller and bassist Helen Svoboda. Hear at at Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale on 26 February.

Adam Manning delivers a Rhythmic Acknowledgement of Country at the top of Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Simone Young-conducted Mahler program, Song of the Earth (25-28 February).

Presented by Phoenix Central Park at The Church in Alexandria on 27 February, the Australian String Quartet airs Samuel Adams’ String Quartet No. 3 and Adelaide composer Benjamin Betelli’s String Quartet No. 3 – one that “draws on the structures of Tchaikovsky and the contrapuntal mastery of Bartók to explore a journey of struggle and renewal.” Enter the ballot for tickets here.

Queensland

Michael Patterson. Portrait supplied

In their consistent support of female composers, Muses Trio presents a program in the Klangfarben Classical Series on 6 February. The featured Australian works are: Tarantella for Stella (Tilly Jones); Into the Light (Nat Bartsch); Reclaiming the Spirit (Sarah Hopkins); Pearl (Nicole Murphy) and Brightest Star in the Night by Ella Macens.

As part of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s concert series QSO Favourites, Uplift by Jessica Wells will be performed on 7 February.

“Tradition meets transformation” in the first concert of 2026 from Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra. On the bill: Concertino For Double Bass And String Orchestra by Camerata’s Michael Patterson, and Carl Vine‘s Smith’s Alchemy. You have two chances to hear it: the first on 20 February at The Empire, Toowoomba, the second on 21 February in the Concert Hall, QPAC.

South Australia

Pianist James Huon George will perform Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Prelude for a Pensive Pupil on 7 February at the North Adelaide Baroque Hall. Visit this link for the full program. 

Marking its 90th anniversary, the ASO’s first concert for 2026, Jupiter (13–14 February, Adelaide Town Hall) features Rachmaninov’s virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Australian premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Go For It, an ASO commission promising Turnage’s signature blend of jazz, contemporary harmonies and rhythmic vitality. 

Victoria

William Barton. Photo © Keith Saunders

Presented as part of Midsumma Festival on 6–7 February, is the world premiere of a new work by Samuel Carrick, winner of The Homophonic! Pride Prize.

Bendigo Chamber Music Festival features numerous Australian composers for their 2026 program from 4–8 February. Osamana String Quartet (ANAM) present selections of Nigel Westlake‘s String Quartet No. 3 and perform Ella Macens Resting with Angels. Also to be performed by pianist Andrea Lam is Bachram by Melody Eötvös.

The Brunswick Beethoven Festival is back for its 18th edition from 2 February. On the bill, on 5 February at Brunswick Uniting Church, a concert of music composed and played by Paul Grabowsky and Mindy Meng Wang.

At Tempo Rubato on 7 February, Lindsay Hicks (flute), Laura Abraham (piano) and guest flautist Molly Jenkins present works composed not for concert halls but for intimate social gatherings in the home. The program is bookended by Sally Greenaway‘s Of Moths and Moonlight and Robert McIntyre‘s sanctionné.

The MSO’s Sidney Myer Free Concerts return from 10–14 February, for the first time in 13 years with four concerts including its 120th-anniversary celebration, pairing Beethoven’s Fifth with Holly Harrison’s Hellbent and new work by Cybec Young Composer in Residence Andrew Aronowicz and 50 Years of ABC Classic, featuring music by Elena Kats-Chernin, Ella Macens, Peter Sculthorpe and Nigel Westlake.

The 2026 Music by the Springs chamber music festival in Victoria’s Hepburn Springs (13-15 February) sees the Australian String Quartet play Alice Chance‘s Nose Scrunch Reel in a program of Beethoven, Britten among others.

Elision returns to the Melbourne Recital Centre on 20 February with Ghosts Making Form, a program named after Liza Lim‘s 2024 work for violoncello and piano, which opens the show. Also on the program, Cat Hope‘s Goddess and the world premiere of Lim’s Magnificat.

On 26 February, in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra join guitar virtuoso Slava Grigoryan in season opener that begins with a world premiere by Joe Chindamo and finishes with Matthew Hindson‘s Song and Dance. They play the Clocktower Centre, Essendon, on 27 February, too.

Western Australia

Meraki, by Melody Eötvös, opens West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s Echoes Through Time concert at St Mary’s Cathedral, Perth on 12 February.

Holly Harrison. Photo © Sally Tsoutas

Holly Harrison‘s And Whether Pigs Have Wings is the meat in a sandwich of works by John Adams and Osvaldo Golijov in WASO’s Mayhem and Rapture concerts, presented in Studio Underground on 27 and 28 February.