There’s a passage in Borges where he describes the Aleph – a point in space containing all other points, every angle and light simultaneously visible.

Something like that happens in this concert, when mezzo-soprano Jessica Aszodi opens her mouth in the second half and six languages, several centuries of musical tradition, and at least three distinct vocal identities pour forth as though they had always coexisted in a single body.

But the evening declares its intentions before that. WASO’s Underground series, presented in association with Perth Festival, has become the orchestra’s laboratory for the wilfully eclectic, and conductor Benjamin Northey had curated this program with the sense of a mischievous architect: two shorter works establishing a foundation of playful American energy, then the labyrinthine emotional landscape of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre as crowning edifice.

Jessica Azzodi, Benjamin Northey and the West Australian Symphonhy Orchestra. Photo © Daniel James Grant

Holly Harrison’s surreal And Whether Pigs Have Wings – yes, Lewis Carroll – proves a puckish curtain-raiser, 10 minutes of wiry, funky, rhythmically exuberant writing that treats the chamber ensemble like a wind-up toy with a philosopher’s brain. Harrison’s gift for combining intellectual rigour...