Cellist Camilla Tafra has gathered a group of early-career instrumentalists from around the country who will perform a concert in Melbourne called Chaos & Chasms, which weaves the works of French baroque composers Jean-Féry Rebel and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre into a narrative featuring enamoured mortals, passionate gods, nymphs, demons and nightingales. The music, which is performed on baroque instruments, evokes the emotion in the mythical world of the tales, while soprano Karen Fitz-Gibbon voices a proud lover’s turmoil. Camilla Tafra spoke to Limelight about the collaboration.

Camilla Tafra. Photograph supplied

When did you first fall in love with baroque music?

I’d always been curious about baroque music and I think was first drawn to it by the drive of the bass lines (as a cellist), but I really fell in love with it after travelling to Canada in 2011 and participating in the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute. It was there that I discovered the diversity of baroque repertoire and the new (well, old!) sound worlds that could be created on period instruments. What made me fall head over heels, though, was the demands in interpreting baroque music to connect directly with story,...