Since coming to prominence fronting rock band George 20 years ago, five-times ARIA winner Katie Noonan has specialised in projects that merge music and poetry. For her latest album, Tumbling Like Stars, the soprano goes back to her home town and the poetic words of fellow Brisbanian, David Malouf. And it’s a pearler.

She is joined here by three of our finest classical vocalists: mezzo-soprano Fiona Campbell, tenor Andrew Goodwin and bass-baritone Andrew O’Connor, collectively calling themselves the Australian Vocal Ensemble, or AVÉ for short. 

The wide-ranging collection of settings features 11 composers, several of whom have worked with her on previous projects: Iain Grandage, Anne Cawrse, David Hirschfelder, Robert Davidson, Connor D’Netto, Jessica Wells, Stephen Leek, Richard Tognetti, Thomas Green, Alice Humphries, and Noonan’s husband Zac Hurran. Noonan also writes her own gentle setting of the love poem Summer – “Our bodies hoard their summer – at night, in each other’s arms, we touch the sun…”

Grandage’s arrangement for Nocturne gets the album off to a magnificent start. Over its...