Welcome to the July 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? Submit your works via our Google Form or 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

Paul Stanhope. Photo supplied

Omega Ensemble is taking its Inner Landscapes to Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne this month, from 11-16 July. John Corigliano’s Soliloquy, Jessie Montgomery’s Grammy Award-winning Rounds and Schubert’s stirring String Quartet No. 14, ‘Death and the Maiden’ are on the menu – and the concert also airs a world premiere: Paludarium Dreams by Paul Stanhope.

Kathryn Selby & Friends (violinist Natalie Chee and cellist Richard Narroway join pianist Selby for this tour) are visiting venues in Canberra, Bowral, Turramurra, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide from 17-26 July. The concert, From Romance to Reckoning, opens with Fire Dances, a suite by eight Australian composers: Nat Bartsch, Olivia Bettina Davies, Natalie Williams, Maria Grenfell, Hilary Kleinig, Elena Kats-Chernin, Cathy Applegate and Isabella Gerometta.

US-born Australian harpist Emily Granger is showcasing her new album, A Thing Of Beauty, in gigs in the Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre (7 July), the Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room (13 July) and later, in September, at the Tyalgum Music Festival. The album features works by Australian women composers: Alice Chance, Christina Sonnemann Baehr, Anne Cawrse, Ulpia Erdos, Sarah Elise Thompson, Margaret Tesch-Muller, Tara Minton, Elena Kats-Chernin, Katy Abbott, Nat Bartsch and Sally Greenaway. The title track is by Adelaide-based composer-cellist Hilary Kleinig.

Anne Cawrse. Photo © Andrew Beveridge

Ensemble Q is on its bike in July, with broadcaster, composer and musicians Ed le Brocq narrating a touring program featuring a new work by Anne Cawrse (based on Le Brocq’s book for children, Sonam & the Silence – you can read more about it here) and organist-composer Calvin Bowman‘s Curly Pyjama Letters. Catch it at Sydney Opera House on 23 July and at Melbourne Recital Centre on 24 July.

Australian Capital Territory

We tried. We couldn’t find any performances of works by an Australian composer – but if you know different, let us know!

New South Wales

At the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on 2 July, you can hear a new work by Jessie Newling (a composer and vocalist in her final year of the Digital Music and Media program): Sing Me The Ocean. In this new experimental work, underwater recordings and the human voice are drawn together into a musical offering to the deep.

On 5 July at Camperdown’s Church St Studios, composer Cassie To and quartet The Nano Symphony offer up a program of works from To’s new album, Heartsongs, written for piano, string quartet and synthesisers.

Western Sydney-based composer Adriel Sukumar‘s Sonata for Cello and Piano sees its world premiere in Surry Hills on 3 July. Two more of Sukumar’s sonatas and a set of solo clarinet works will also be performed at St Stephen’s Uniting Church on 10 July  by clarinettist Austin O’Toole and pianist Asia Movsovic.

Bryony Marks. Photo supplied

Bryony Marks has composed the score for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s new children’s show, Pinocchio, playing at ACO on the Pier 9-19 July and at Parramatta’s PHIVE on 25 July.

Over at the Sydney Opera House on 19 July, Berlin Philharmonic violinist Harry Ward returns home to Australia for a recital with pianist Ying Ho. The program features Liza Lim‘s Cardamom, as well as a brand new work composed by Ward and his brother, Ben Ward.

Before it jets off to the Three Choirs Festival, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Faire is the Heaven offers a selection of hymns and anthems on 12 July. The program features Joe Twist‘s Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis as well as Alice Chance‘s Agnus Dei and Sanctus (plus her arrangement of John Ireland’s Greater Lover Hath No Man.

Back from its first Top End tour in 30 years, The Australian Youth Orchestra returns to City Recital Hall on 19 July with its Brave New Worlds program that includes Brett Dean’s Testament – his powerful prelude to the Beethoven Eroica Symphony.

From 24 July at Carriageworks (until 31 July), you can experience a new Sydney Chamber Opera production of The Oresteia, an opera in seven parts after Aeschylus, with music by Liza Lim and a libretto by Lim, Barrie Kosky, Sappho and Tony Harrison. Jack Symonds conducts Elision Ensemble.

Queensland

Opera in the Country’s Tones & Tides continues its island tour across Coochiemudlo Island, Macleay Island and North Stradbroke Island across 1–4 July, with works by Ross Edwards, Miriam Hyde and Margaret Sutherland on the program.

Sam Wu. Photo © Brian Cassey

The 2026 Australian Festival of Chamber Music opens in Cairns-Gimuy on 24 July with several Australian composers on the bill. The Opening Night Concert, Cairns Crescendo, has a brand new AFCM commission by Sam Wu as its centrepiece. On 25 July in a 5pm concert titled Twilight’s Embrace, you’ll hear Margaret Sutherland‘s Nocturn for Violin and Piano.

On 26 July in Cairns’ CPAC theatre, you can hear music by the man hailed as “Australia’s first composer”, Isaac Nathan (1792-1864), in a Horrible Histories concert devoted to music by composers who met untimely and sometimes bizarre ends.

A morning cruise with music? AFCM has you covered. On 28 July, The Spirit of Cairns sets sail toward the Coral Sea. On board is a sextet playing music by JS Bach and Sam Wu (there’s an evening cruise, too), and on 29 July at the CPAC Theatre, more music by Sam Wu – his Travelogues, played by current and former AFCM Artistic Directors Jack Liebeck and Piers Lane.

Lee Bradshaw. Photo © Peter M. Lamont

On 31 July, in the fifth of the Ray Golding Sunset Series Concerts, you’ll hear a new AFCM commission, which sees Australian composer Lee Bradshaw complete a work that was started by Gideon Klein 80 years ago in the Nazi concentration camp where he was incarcerated. Later that evening, another world premiere: that of Alex Turley‘s Substratum, which serves as an opener for Schubert’s Winterreisse.

The AFCM Closing Night concert at the CPAC Theatre on 1 August opens with a work from William Barton, Dialogue.

Meanwhile, in Brisbane, Christopher Larkin‘s Hollow Knight Suite features in a concert devoted to music from some of the world’s leading video game titles on 24 and 25 July in the QPAC Concert Hall.

Nexus New Music hosts ann all-female, all-Australian program at Topology Creative Hub on 25 July, featuring Grace Wellik‘s On this summer’s day there is only birdsong.

South Australia

Hilary Kleinig. Photo supplied

Airing in the 2026 Adelaide Illuminate festival, Hilary Kleinig‘s The Lost Art of Listening brings people together with their phones to play in a shared sonic experience that explores listening and its place in human existence, framed by a stillness that is rare today. It’s at Vitalstatistix’s Waterside Worker Hall in Port Adelaide on 9–11 July.

Accordionist James Crabb premieres Holly Harrison’s new concerto – one shaped by her lively rhythms and blues-infused style – in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s New Ground concerts on 17 and 18 July.

Tasmania

Xani Kolac. Photo © Michelle Grace Hunder

Armed with a loop station, a suite of electronic effects, violinist, composer, singer and improviser Xani Kolac builds vivid soundscapes that move between cinematic warmth, distorted edge and glowing electronic colour. You can hear Xani at The Barn at Rosny Farm on 5 July, part of the 2026 Festival of Voices.

In similar vein, Emily Sanzaro takes listeners on an evocative journey with her original music shaped by her harp, voice and loop pedal on 6 July at the Peacock Arts Centre, Salamanca.

Victoria

A new work from Australian Art Orchestra Artistic Director Aaron Choulai, Smoke Between Mountains, has its Australian premiere at the Melbourne Immigration Music on 8 July. The work borrows from a Studio Ghibli-inspired sound palette in an exploration of both Japanese and First Nations knowledge systems.

Taking its name from a work by Aaron Wyatt, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra is playing its Under the Canopy concert in Melbourne, Ballarat and Werribee from 9-12 July.

Melbourne String Ensemble celebrates its 40th birthday year on 10 July at Melbourne Recital Centre with a concert featuring five ensembles playing works such as Chausson’s Poème, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D minor and Carl Vine’s Smith’s Alchemy.

Also at MRC, on 13 July, Australian violinist Harry Ward is joined by pianist Lachlan Matheson and double bassist Ben Ward for a program of Shostakovich, Beethoven and Liza Lim’s Cardamom.

Bassoonist James Aylward and recorder player Ryan Williams are at Tempo Rubato, Brunswick on 13 July. On the bill of fare is Liza Lim‘s The Long Forgetting for solo recorder.

On 16 July at Melbourne Recital Centre, Elision comes together for a 40th anniversary concert that includes Great Dog! by Kate Milligan and Tailor of Time by Liza Lim, a work inspired by the poetry of Rumi.

Western Australia

The West Australian Symphony Orchestra – with Anja Bihlmaier conducting and Benjamin Beilmanon violin – opens a concert centred on Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (3 and 4 July) with The Saqqara Bird by Melody Eötvös.

WASO’s Sibelius’ Second concert on 31 July includes Elena Kats-Chernin‘s Piano Concerto No. 3 Lebewohl, played by her longtime collaborator Tamara-Anna Cislowska.