Humming synthesizer and gentle piano envelope singer-songwriter Paul Kelly’s distinctive growl as he delivers the opening lines of Judith Wright’s poem Black Cockatoos: “Each certain kind of weather or of light has its own creatures.” Birds are the creatures showcased in Kelly’s latest project, a collaboration with pianist Anna Goldsworthy and her Seraphim Trio, composer James Ledger, and singer-songwriter Alice Keath, Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds, commissioned by the Adelaide Festival. The cycle sets bird-themed poetry by the likes of Judith Wright, W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Gwen Harwood and others.

Alice Keath, Anna Goldsworthy, Helen Ayres, Tim Nankervis, James Ledger and Paul Kelly in Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds. Photo © Shane Reid

Kelly worked with Ledger several years ago on Conversations with Ghosts, which saw the pair joined by musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music and Genevieve Lacey on recorders. Here the pair set a different tone, leaning away from the haunting, atmospheric haze of Ghosts and into a more plain-speaking folk-rock idiom. That said, Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds is a genre-blending collaboration and the sound world is at times one of contemporary classical music.

The setting of Thomas...