Canberra’s Luminescence Chamber Singers only performs in other cities a couple times a year, but when it does, the group of six, led by former Song Company Artistic Director Roland Peelman, puts on a hell of a show.

Two years ago it graced Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room with an eclectic program, Of The Body, featuring a song cycle by the group’s resident composer and tenor Dan Walker, interlinked with material drawn from the Renaissance and Baroque and modern writers Justin Vernon (indie luminary Bon Iver) and “freak folk” guru Devendra Banhart.

Taking inspiration from Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri – seven cantatas dedicated to different parts of Christ’s body on the cross – Walker wrote pieces that reference the eyes, hands, mouth, feet, blood and the heart, using texts ranging from Petrarch to Pablo Neruda and, remarkably, spoken instructions from an American cardiac surgeon on how to hold and remove a person’s heart from their chest cavity.

This is glorious singing from leader mezzo AJ America, sopranos Veronica Milroy and...