Table of contents for July 2025 in Limelight

Once a child star, now a battle-hardened veteran, Michael Collins is Britain's preeminent clarinettist with a distinguished CV that includes his work as conductor, recording artist and commissioner of new music. As a performer, he's a pioneer of the basset clarinet, the once-forgotten 18th-century instrument for which Mozart wrote his famous concerto. What is less well known, however, is how lucky we are to be able to hear him play after two near-disastrous encounters with the fickle finger of fate. This month sees him returning to Australia where he headlines the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville, before he and fellow clarinettist David Rowden premiere Graeme Koehne's new double concerto for Omega Ensemble. He also visits ANAM in Melbourne for a workshop on how to direct an orchestra from…

The last time Opera Australia performed Georges Bizet's Carmen it was done as a pop-up event on Sydney's Cockatoo Island in 2022 – something in the vein of the annual Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, but grittier. A less posh HOSH if you will. Carmen has been seen at HOSH too of course – twice – in a dashing staging by Gale Edwards in which the toreador Escamillo first arrived in a high-end car and was later flown in by crane. In 2020 and 2021, OA sent a travel-friendly Carmen on the road for a national tour while at the same time reviving John Bell's Carmen, the one with the Cuban vibe, at the Sydney Opera House. Bell's production replaced one by American director Francesca Zambello. Zambello's followed Lindy Hume's…

Shortly after Mat Schulz pops into our Zoom chat from a café garden in Kraków, Poland, having just arrived on a train from Warsaw, he pieces together our alma mater – The University of Sydney. Born in Wagga Wagga, he studied philosophy and Australian literature there before writing his first novel and then jetting off to live in Kraków with his earnings. He still writes, but his main gig nowadays is as founding Director of Unsound, an annual Polish festival for experimental music and arts, with branches in 30 cities worldwide, including Adelaide, London and New York. Unsound began in Kraków's intimate cellar bars in 2003 as a side hobby for Schulz and a friend. “The country and city were very much in transformation, and Unsound developed as a part…

Hollywood Songbook – Musica Viva Australia Ali McGregor and the Signum Saxophone Quartet offer a stirring blend of sass, strut and swagger. Tackling some classic (and lesser-known) numbers from the Hollywood Songbook with a saxophone quartet sounds a bit mad. Yet, peeling back the logic, it makes more sense. You get the brassiness of the big band that this music was written for, but in a stripped-back way that lets the vocalist do subtle things with phrasing and tonal colour. Soprano Ali McGregor and an incredibly energetic Signum Saxophone Quartet deliver the concept masterfully in Musica Viva's Hollywood Songbook tour. The story of Hollywood – a new creative rise that led to it dominating popular culture at a global level like no other historical phenomenon – is, of course, one…

I went for a walk around the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne recently and a friend's child tagged along with an e-scooter, which ran out of power halfway along our perambulation. He looked at it as if it was broken and asked, “What do I do now?” I replied, “You just push it like we used to do in the old days.” In some ways this kid had a point. The e-scooter was so heavy with its battery that it didn't really work that well when the ‘e’ had run out – the same way that if your Tesla ran out of battery, it wouldn't be a car anymore, just a lump of metal and an awkward reminder of a loony right-wing multi-billionaire. Look at what happened to Spain and…

CLASSICAL MUSIC Australian Chamber Orchestra: ACO Unleashed Following the withdrawal of Patricia Kopatchinskaja due to injury, Artistic Director Richard Tognetti has come up with a brand-new program showcasing the ACO's wealth of talent. Jointly directed by Satu Vänskä, who performs Ravel's explosive Tzigane, and Helena Rathbone, who joins her and ACO newcomer Anna da Silva Chen in JS Bach's Triple Violin Concerto, it also sees Timo-Veikko Valve explore his Finnish roots in Jaakko Kuusisto's Cello Concerto, while Schubert's Quartettsatz and Tognetti's own arrangement of Beethoven's Serioso round out this 50th-anniversary celebration. Jansson J. Antmann Until 2 July, venues in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane, aco.com.au Young Mannheim Symphonists: 2025 State Academy Concerts Fresh from a tour of regional Queensland in Mozart's Clarinet, the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra holds…

Organist and conductor James O'Donnell is no stranger to Australian audiences. Last year, he gave recitals in Adelaide and Sydney, inaugurating the new organ at St James’ Church, King Street. In 2007, he toured with the Choir of Westminster Abbey, where he was Organist and Master of Choristers for 23 years, directing the music for royal, state and national occasions such as the state funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory – an honour conferred by Pope John Paul II – he is now Professor in the Practice of Organ and Sacred Music at the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. In July, he will begin his latest Australian tour with an organ recital at Adelaide's Pilgrim…

In 1925, actor and drama teacher Barbara Sisley, who had recently returned from a year's study in London, decided to form the Brisbane Repertory Theatre Society. A century on, that company – now known as La Boite Theatre – is celebrating its 100th birthday. “It's amazing and against all the odds,” says La Boite's Artistic Director Courtney Stewart, “not just because La Boite is a small but mighty theatre company, but because cultural institutions across the nation have always kind of hit above their weight. It's such an amazing milestone for us, but also for the sector.” The anniversary will be celebrated with a fundraising 100th Birthday Gala at La Boite Theatre on Saturday 5 July. The history of La Boite can be explored in an archive on the company's…

ABC listening highlight Force Fatale – Omega Ensemble 29 July at 7pm Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet opens this program, with Omega Ensemble's Artistic Director David Rowden in top form alongside TSO Concertmaster Emma McGrath, Mark Ingwersen on second violin, Neil Thompson on viola and Paul Stender on cello. The quintet has a symphonic sweep with surprising changes of mood – the hushed and exquisite opening of the second movement morphing into a Klezmer-like clarinet solo. The five instruments blend beautifully throughout, Brahms’ friend Eusebius Mandyczewski saying it was as if they were “in love with one another”. Pianist Vatche Jambazian joins McGrath and Stender for Nigel Westlake's Piano Trio, in which the pivotal middle movement, with its spacious gently pulsing piano chords and yearning string duet, has the floating feeling of…

You might not recognise the title of the song Mná na hÉireann – or even its English translation, Women of Ireland – but you'd know the tune. It was one of The Chieftains’ most celebrated records, used by Stanley Kubrick in his film Barry Lyndon, and recorded by the likes of Kate Bush, Sinéad O'Connor, Jeff Beck and Mike Oldfield. In Ireland, the song is more than merely famous; it has an almost mythical significance, although the significance changes according to whom you ask. A few years ago, my neighbour Owen J. Conlan, a Dubliner born and bred, told me that on his only trip to Ireland in 38 years, he had stood at his mother's grave and played the song on his tin whistle. He also said he had…

Newsworthy A round-up of our recent news reports Richard Mills has been appointed as the new Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of Darwin Symphony Orchestra. One of Australia's most accomplished composers and conductors, he will officially begin his tenure with the orchestra's 2026 season, which he will program. His appointment brings to the Top End a leader with decades of experience across Australia's orchestral and operatic sectors. Best known for his Helpmann Award-winning operas Batavia and The Love of the Nightingale, Mills has led major arts institutions including Victorian Opera, West Australian Opera and the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra, and is a longtime advocate for new Australian music and regional engagement. “I love the DSO; this is an orchestra with a unique voice in Australia and a vital role in the…

When Mitchell Butel saw the musical Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway in 2023, he stood up so quickly to applaud at the end that he whacked his lip on the wooden back of the seat in front of him and it started to bleed as he cheered. “I thought, ‘That's a sign of deep appreciation for a show!’” he laughs. Featuring music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home, Shrek) and book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (based on his 2001 play), Kimberly Akimbo centres on teenager Kimberly Levaco, who was born with a rare genetic disease that means she ages four times faster than everyone else. She is now 16 going on 70. Her narcissistic mum is pregnant and a hypochondriac. Her alcoholic dad is a bit of a dropkick. When her…