It seems that the expressive potential of the cello is limitless.

A 2024 Young Classical Artist Trust (YCAT) Artist, the prodigiously-talented, Adelaide-born cellist James Morley is now based in Switzerland where he is completing a Master of Contemporary Music at the Musik-Akademie Basel. This concert at UKARIA, an intimate space that focuses the ears, eyes, mind and heart like no other venue, was eagerly anticipated by his hometown audience.

Morley’s program fell into two very different halves. In the first, he performed a series of solo pieces, each of a few minutes, exploring the sound of the cello and the kinds of music that can be made with it.

In the second half, he was joined by Pinchgut Opera Artistic Director Erin Helyard at the piano for works by Beethoven, Clara Schumann and Schubert.

James Morley performing at UKARIA Cultural Centre, March 2022. Photo © Tony Lewis.

Morley opened with Benjamin Britten’s Canto primo: Sostenuto e largamente from his Cello Suite No. 1, Op. 72 (1966), one of three cello suites by Britten that were inspired by and dedicated to legendary Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich....