He may share the name of a character from Charles Dickens, and bear a passing resemblance to a young Ernest Hemingway, but music is Sam Weller’s game and he has established himself as one of Sydney’s most exciting young conductors.

Still only aged 25, he founded Ensemble Apex in 2016 and since then this group of adventurous and precociously talented young musicians have played in some interesting venues to packed audiences seeking something other than the conventional concert experience.

Shows are staged as funds permit – like many arts organisations Apex is currently awaiting news of its application for government funding. They might be intimate and close up, like the program of Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky and Walton played in the basement of Sydney Town Hall; or some Haydn and Shostakovich in among the Apollo moon shot exhibits in the Powerhouse Museum.

Or they could be on a grander scale, like last year’s performance of Verdi’s Requiem in a new cathedral-like art storage depot in Sydney’s Inner West. Whatever the case, tickets get snapped up by young and old as soon as they are released and there’s always a sense of camaraderie in the audience.