At any Ensemble Offspring concert you can expect the unexpected, but no one could have anticipated the start of the group’s latest show at the Carriageworks in Sydney.

No sooner had the audience taken its seats when the fire alarm sounded and they had to file out of the building for nearly 20 minutes while two fire engines came and dealt with the “emergency”. We had been warned that the program would include “haze”, but not this.

Order restored, Artistic Director Claire Edwardes and her sextet took their positions on the dramatically lit performance space below the raked rows of seats. Spools of string were placed at various points between the impressive array of instruments for a recital based around Richard Meale’s landmark 1971 piece, Incredible Floridas, and which included two world premieres and a show-stopping favourite by Meale’s student Martin Wesley-Smith.

Claire Edwardes performs Incredible Floridas. Photo © Oliver Miller/Ensemble Offspring

Introducing Incredible Floridas, Edwardes described the avant-garde work as a “sonic wonder” and part of a “lesser told narrative” in Australian music. Its six movements are each based on a poem by the French surrealist Arthur Rimbaud, the most famous...