Audiences were invited into Ensemble Offspring’s The Oracle on Wednesday evening, a program of three Australian premieres and four distinctive works. Artistic Director Claire Edwardes described it as the ensemble’s most ambitious and immersive project of 2026 – an apt introduction to a concert exploring themes of humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

The concept of the oracle as a source of knowledge and revelation provided the evening’s unifying thread. Drawing connections between ancient traditions and contemporary Australian voices, the works also exhibited a collectively strong environmental consciousness.

Ensemble Offspring: The Oracle. Photo © Jared Underwood

Christopher Cerrone’s How to Breathe Underwater opened the evening. An electronic drone lingered beneath the cello and bass clarinet, creating a muted resonance suggestive of submersion. Vocalist Véronique Serret and trumpeter Arkie Moore shared a particularly compelling musical dialogue, their phrases feeding into one another with an organic sense of breath and exchange.

While Cerrone has described the work as reflecting both water and states of emotional overwhelm, the recurring melodic fragments also evoked a meditative quality. The piece became an exploration of interdependence, illustrating how performers rely upon one another to sustain and communicate musical ideas.

Kate Moore’s Rose of Roses looked further into the past, drawing inspiration from the medieval cantiga tradition. Structured as a sequence of short pieces, the work imagines a nightingale singing itself to death. Monophonic textures and modal harmonies evoke an ancient sound world, while Moore’s sensitive orchestration brings freshness and vitality to the material.

Particularly effective was the way melodic material passed seamlessly between players, each musician inheriting and transforming the nightingale’s song while preserving its delicate character. The ensemble brought vitality and momentum to a work that could easily have become static in less assured hands.

Ensemble Offspring’s Claire Edwardes. Photo © Jared Underwood

English composer Tansy Davies travelled to Australia for the performance alongside her partner, the evening’s conductor, Clark Rundell.

Davies’ Lost Science descends into the Earth’s core, constructing a highly gestural and atmospheric soundscape. Deep electronic resonances rumbled beneath the ensemble, suggesting tectonic movement and subterranean instability. Sharp pops and cracks from Bartók pizzicati and the clap cymbal were recurring punctuating gesture, contrasting with the work’s darker drones and sustained sonorities.

This work invited the ensemble to actively resonate with one another’s timbral and tonal qualities. Under Rundell’s direction, the ensemble articulated the work’s sense of unease, bringing both menace and momentum to Davies’ volatile sonic landscape. Davies’ writing skilfully balances tension and release, creating a sonic environment that evokes processes of combustion, pressure and geological formation.

The evening concluded with Moore’s Storm Oratory, a vibrant percussion concerto that placed Edwardes centre stage. As the storm gathered force, driving rhythmic motifs propelled the work forward, constantly shifting through layers of metric interpolation and unexpected rhythmic shifts. Moments of calm provided welcome contrast, particularly in Edwardes’ lyrical marimba solo. Ostinati and rising five-note figures circulated throughout the ensemble, creating collisions of texture and harmony as dissonances accumulated and dissolved.

Moore captures nature’s power as a cyclical force, repeatedly building, dissipating and returning with renewed energy. Throughout, Edwardes navigated the demanding solo part with remarkable precision and musicality, commanding attention above the instrumental bed of the ensemble. Storm Oratory proved a fitting climax to the evening, earning enthusiastic and sustained applause from the audience.

The Oracle showcased Ensemble Offspring at its most adventurous. Through sound worlds ranging from the meditative and beautiful to the unsettling and elemental, the program demonstrated the ensemble’s commitment to championing contemporary music that is emotionally resonant.

Ensemble Offspring performs The Oracle on 5 June at The Street, Canberra.