The imperial splendour of the Adelaide Town Hall with its faux rococo flourishes, Queen Victoria glowering in the marble foyer, the time-freezing peal of bells from the Post Office tower across King William Street, all the images and sounds of old Adelaide – still so very British in so many respects – gave way to a new spirit of joy and expectation from a new kind of audience, many of whom may not have stepped inside these hallowed civic walls before.

Entering the hall, there were already hints of a very different kind of concert experience from the kind I remember as a schoolboy. This is the hall where my ears ‘grew’, its glorious acoustic setting the bar way above anything I would encounter later at Bennelong Point. A darkened auditorium with a semi-circle of black-clad musicians enveloping the conductor’s podium, a reflection of a time honoured tribal gathering around a campfire, perhaps.

Onto the stage strode two Indigenous men, their naked torsos festooned in traditional paints, Stephen and Jamie Goldsmith, welcoming the audience with traditional chant and light-hearted banter to Karuna country, to Adelaide, “the place of the red kangaroo.” Then, projected over the orchestra, the first of a series...