Jason Blake

6 days ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Jason Blake

There was a beautiful, poignant shape to this special Wednesday night Easter concert, with Olivia Davies’ intimate Femina Mortem celebrating Christ’s mother Mary and John Rutter’s effervescent Gloria praising Jesus Christ before mother and son were brought together in Mary Finsterer’s dramatic Ad Honorem Beatae Mariae Virginis & Stabat Mater.

1 week ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Jason Blake

Nancy Bates didn’t expect to become a musician – let alone one who would tour the country with Archie Roach or bring songwriting programs into women’s prisons. But Bates’ path has always been less about career than it is about calling. A Barkandji and Wilyakali woman from far west New South Wales, Bates grew up around guitars and community singalongs in Broken Hill and Wilcannia. Music was a part of life, but not something she saw as a future. “I was a late bloomer,” she says.

1 week ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Jason Blake

Salut! Baroque, under its joint Artistic Directors recorderist Sally Melhuish and cellist Tim Blomfield, has been delighting Sydney and Canberra early music enthusiasts for 30 years with its concerts featuring diverse and often obscure works from various centuries and countries.

1 week ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Jason Blake

Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs Chamber Music Festival returns in May 2025 with a two-week program blurring the boundaries between the classic and contemporary, the musical and the theatrical. Opening night on Tuesday 6 May sets the tone with a Prometheus-themed program featuring festival curator and pianist Coady Green alongside Ian Munro, Justin Kenealy, Paul English, Antoinette Halloran, and the Divisi Chamber Singers.

1 week ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Jason Blake

When composer and pianist Paul Grabowsky was invited to write a new work for Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra – he didn’t just bring a score. He brought a provocation. The result is Elegy and Caprices, a world premiere airing on 6 and 7 May, that glides between written and improvised material, blending deep lyricism with sudden, unpredictable energy. “It’s called Elegy and Caprices,” says Grabowsky.