Sometimes it’s just Kismet.

Like when Paul Kildea, artistic director of Musica Viva Australia, asked members of the Penny Quartet if they knew of a singer called Jess Hitchcock. She was, Kildea said, an interesting artist whose work spanned songwriting, recording, performing with major stars such as Paul Kelly, and appearing in the world premiere of The Visitors with Victorian Opera.

Kildea was interested in commissioning arrangements of her original songs for Hitchcock to perform with the Penny Quartet.

“I said ‘yes, we’ve been friends for years’,” says Madeleine Jevons, a founding member of the Penny Quartet, “and it turns out that Jess and Jack [Ward, cellist in the Quartet] went to high school together and Jess met Anthony [Chataway, viola in the Quartet] through Melbourne Symphony Orchestra gigs. The stars all aligned.”

And so it was that, last October, Jess Hitchcock and Penny Quartet spent a week at UKARIA in South Australia, workshopping a baker’s dozen of songs arranged by some of Australia’s most exciting composers ranging from Holly Harrison and Harry Sdraulig to Christine Pan and James Mountain.

A week of intensive rehearsal culminated in...