Now in its fifth year, the Blackheath Chamber Music Festival is bigger and better than ever, with some of the world’s best artists delivering a three-day program of five-star music-making.

Curated by founding President and Director Catherine Harker, it is bookended by Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus and Lior and Nigel Westlake’s Compassion – two exceptional settings of Psalms and ancient texts composed 300 years apart.

Nisi Dominus is presented as part of In Bach’s Orbit, a program tailor-made for the festival and the final stop on countertenor Reginald Mobley’s tour with Bach Akademie Australia, during which he also performed with Paul Grabowsky at UKARIA.

Reginald Mobley with Bach Akademie Australia at the 2025 Blackheath Chamber Music Festival. Photo © Keith Saunders

Led by BAA Artistic Director and violinist Madeleine Easton, it opens with the Concerto for Four Violins by Telemann – JS Bach’s close friend and godfather to his son.

Mobley then takes the stage for Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus, included here in recognition of the composer’s influence on Bach. A nine-movement setting of Vesper Psalm 127, it is the most demanding of Vivaldi’s surviving settings for solo voice and a perfect vehicle for...