The profanity of it! Circus acrobats acting like mischievous toddlers, prodding and even wrapping up serious chamber musicians while they bash away at Bach. As the trio clowned and bounced around like an excitable Mr Bean, each musician delivered a masterful performance, desperately focusing on the score rather than the mayhem while maintaining a poise rarely seen in such circumstances.

Triple-Grammy-winning Southern Cross Soloists (SXS) artistic director Tim Munro injected fun and frivolity into Sacred & Profane, the ensemble’s final concert of 2026. The traditional style of chamber music performance was abandoned, replaced by a big top when three world-class circus artists took to the stage in a unique collaboration with circus director Rowan Heydon-White.

Southern Cross Soloists: Sacred & Profane. Photo © Stephen Henry

A flurry of sheet music, flung liberally around the audience and stage to Shostakovich’s A Spin Through Moscow, announced the flustered arrival of the extraordinarily talented performing artist Paul O’Keefe, whose clowning disguises a multitude of elite talents. His pratfalls, comical conducting and bizarre backwards bike-riding were both entertaining and astonishing.

Acrobatic strongwoman Kathryn O’Keefe ballet-danced and balanced precariously to Shostakovich’s funky Jazz Suite, demonstrating incredible strength and poise. The couple then foxtrotted on top of circus artist Gerramy Marsden, contorting themselves to the beat of the snare drum played by Rebecca Lloyd-Jones.

Munro’s wild piccolo face-off with Ashley Smith’s chattering clarinet during Elena Kats-Chernin’s Russian Rag continued as Margaret Blade’s violin was swiped away from her amid the mayhem. Straight-faced, she simply picked up another. György Déri’s cello suffered the same fate, balanced upright on Marsden’s face as he proudly paraded it around the stage.

Southern Cross Soloists: Sacred & Profane. Photo © Stephen Henry

Flautist Munro describes the heart of the SXS as “a space for intimate, meaningful connection”. Both elements were on display as each musician took a solo in the limelight during the Bach Suite, only to be wrapped up like a musical present, ribbon and all, by the cantankerous trio.

A stoic Liam Viney delivered a delicious Allemande from Bach’s Partita No. 4 on piano while wrapped like a mummy, his mouth covered but, fortunately, his hands free. Munro was tossed around during his Courante, miraculously managing to keep his flute attached to his lips while ignoring the incessant staring, pulling and prodding.

Southern Cross Soloists: Sacred & Profane. Photo © Stephen Henry

Blade was even blindfolded at one point, but the unflappable professionals remained laser-focused as the band played on, Titanic-like. The continuous flow of music was accompanied rhythmically by the circus artists, who demonstrated incredible talent and strength as they walked on poles and posed dextrously in a three-person-high tower.

The Star Trek-like elongated notes of flute and marimba calmly closed the chaotic show with David Lang’s delicious These Broken Wings. As the floating flute soared above, Marsden pulled a long white ribbon to the strains of the Passacaille, with the O’Keefes moonwalking on top of it with incredible precision, simulating a long, distant journey.

Perhaps a small contingent of the twin-set-and-pearls brigade might have been affronted by such profane shenanigans at a supposedly sacred chamber music recital, but the audience lapped it up. They delighted in the naughtiness and exotic skills of the talented trio while relishing the unruffled virtuosity of the superb SXS, who took a risk and encouraged us all to “step right up!”