There was a sense of wilderness about Ensemble Offspring’s Avant Gardens Spring: music that sprawled out from spring’s blossoming into a living, breathing garden of sound.

The Avant Gardens series takes audiences into the intimate settings of the homes of its musicians and donors. This concert, featuring Ensemble Offspring’s 2026 Hatched Emerging Performer, Arkie Moore (trumpet), was at first glance an odd programming choice for a living room. But alongside Claire Edwardes (marimba) and Jason Noble (clarinets), this eclectic trio embraced the intimacy of the setting, producing a vast and evocative palette of ensemble colour.

Avant Gardens Spring: Arkie Moore, Jason Noble and Claire Moore. Photo © Ruari Campbell

As part of her Hatched Performer opportunity, Moore commissioned jazz saxophonist and composer Remy Le Boeuf, whom she met while performing with the Australian Youth Jazz Orchestra. This world premiere opened the afternoon.

Davenport Cliffs & Wilder Beach was a homage to the landscapes of Le Boeuf’s childhood in Santa Cruz, California. A textured layering of marimba, bass clarinet and trumpet meandered through winding hiking trails before Wilder Beach took on a more nostalgic resonance. The beach itself was etched through the swelling tremolo of marimba waves and the rich sonority of the flugelhorn, played exquisitely by Moore.

The Avant Gardens series gets up close and personal with both Ensemble Offspring and the composers with whom it collaborates. Long-term collaborator Gerard Brophy was in the audience to introduce the second work in the program, three movements from Just Outside Van…. A sense of distant longing sang through Noble’s high bass clarinet solo, while the final movement saw Edwardes and Noble navigating a playful melody in impressive unison.

Avant Gardens Spring: Arkie Moore. Photo © Ruari Campbell

Moore then returned for the premiere of Nardi Simpson’s Where Water Amplifies, a work written in direct collaboration with the trio. Prompted by Simpson’s recollection of the river as a means of projecting Indigenous language across the fences of missions, each player embodied a symbol of the landscape: fence, river, people. The work closed with the haunting ghost of a Christmas carol and the curious scuttle of a small mechanical nanobug placed in Noble’s bass clarinet bell.

It was a fitting prelude to an arrangement of Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas, originally written for solo cello but performed here on solo marimba. Reverent and shimmering, this reimagining of a Thomas Tallis hymn was a soothing inclusion before two contrasting duets.

Helen Grime’s Embrace explored the similarities and differences between clarinet and trumpet. Bright flourishes and a conversational canon were enlivened by exemplary communication between the duo.

Noble and Edwardes followed with Jane Stanley’s Floral Streets (Jasmine), in which their gestures sprawled like vines, filigree spiralling into greater intensity.

The final work nodded to Moore’s versatility as a performer, taking on a jazz-inflected hue. Andrew Classen’s Waveland Suite was a playful, three-movement ode to a golf course. Moore’s virtuosic solo prompted mid-performance applause, while the bluesy final movement left the audience with an enduring earworm.

Moore proved herself a fierce advocate for the myriad possibilities of her instrument, as Ensemble Offspring once again delighted with a concert of music ripe with innovation.

Ensemble Offspring takes Avant Gardens Spring to Holland Park, Brisbane on 25 October.