With the Acacia Quartet, Orange Chamber Music Festival taps in local talent. The group calls the Central West its home and is no stranger to taking classical and Australian works to the regions. In the quiet, ornate St. Joseph’s Church on a Saturday afternoon, it offers a French-led program tackling an emotional gamut.

This Saturday afternoon flows on from the OCMF’s 2026 Cultured program, a morning of free performance that light up the city’s cultural hub just down the road (this year was crowned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows and Hartmann’s Dance Suite for Wind Quintet, backdropped by an Orange Regional Gallery exhibition about the mating dances of exotic jumping spiders – a delightfully quirky pairing).

Cellist Stephan Koncz’s A New Satiesfaction borrows from Satie’s hit Gymnopédie No. 1. for an amiable and buoyant work for quartet. Relishing the airiness and sparkle of the violin’s highest register, the work glimmers in the hands of Acacia’s violinists – particularly first violinist Lisa Stewart – while ranging in tone from lightly delicate to intense, with all hands on deck.

Puccini’s Crisantemi – named after the chrysanthemum flowers that were used exclusively...