I’m not really sure what to make of this gig, which was part of Brisbane Music Festival’s six-month stint. It was nominally focusing on songs from Jane Sheldon’s 2018 album Crossing, a collaboration with guitarist Julian Curwin, but odd programming choices left it falling flat.

The concert began with classical guitarist Jeremy Stafford playing Australian composer Phillip Houghton’s Ophelia (A Haunted Sonata). Houghton’s best pieces have a certain lightness and spontaneity to them, but Ophelia feels rather self-conscious, as if he were trying to resist the urge to write the lovely, rich, modal tunes that his music tends towards. As you might expect from the subject matter, Ophelia is discordant, but also somewhat aimless; nonetheless, Stafford made as convincing a performance of this as I think you could hear.

Jane Sheldon. Photo © Stefanie Zingsheim

Jane Sheldon (and percussionist Thea Rossen) came onstage next for the centrepiece performance of songs from Crossing. In his introduction to the performance, Brisbane Music Festival’s Artistic Director Alex Raineri noted that these were new arrangements for this performance.

They’re all slow, atmospheric songs that in some cases feel frustratingly repetitive (the song Ophelia, for instance, has...