“Within our little quiet, which is at least as remarkable as the cosmic roar and everything it carries with it, we have been up to all sorts of things, testing the limits of good and evil, filling the calm with havoc and disruption, making music and poetry.”

– Marilynne Robinson, A Theology of the Present Moment, New York Review of Books (22 December 2022)

Few quotes so aptly describe our present moment. And few concert programs, such as this one, performed on the first evening of the first day of this year’s Perth Festival, so readily speak to it. Composer and conductor Richard Mills and his fellow artists have been busy making music and poetry of the present – while pressing into service that of the past.

Music of the Spheres, Perth Concert Hall. Photo © Corey James

The result was Music of the Spheres, which Perth Festival Artistic Director Iain Grandage describes as “a concert of worlds within worlds”. He could also have said words within worlds. Or worlds within words. Because without the Word as context, the assemblage of musical parts would make little sense. Except, perhaps, as a pretty clockwork model...