About Stormlight

Across three distinctive programmes, The Opera and Song Collective explores the interplay of light and shadow in music, drama and human connection. From the charged histories of Return of the Queens: Kings Arise, where power and private truth collide, to the intimate, contemporary voices of Stormlight, where composers and performers share living works, and culminating in the luminous contrast of Shadow to Champagne: Strauss & Strauss, the series traces a journey from darkness to brilliance.

Together, these concerts reveal light not as a single idea, but as something shifting — psychological, sensory and celebratory — at the heart of musical experience.

Programme 2. 'Stormlight'

Stormlight: Contemporary Voices — Light and Shadow Step into an afternoon of contemporary music shaped by mystery, memory, darkness and illumination. In Stormlight, The Opera and Song Collective presents a richly atmospheric programme where living composers, performers and poets explore the emotional currents of our time — from enchantment and longing to humour, unease and transformation. The programme features music by acclaimed Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, alongside works by Australian and American composers including Thomas Pasatieri, Christine Draeger, Tristan Entwistle, Michael Lampard, Nigel McDougall and the late David Tunley, whose luminous A Wedding Masque reunites former students and colleagues in performance. Highlights include Pasatieri’s gripping Lady Macbeth cantata for soprano and piano, Saariaho’s shimmering Changing Light and Ariel’s Hail, Entwistle’s witty and operatic Much Ado About Nothing suite, and new Australian works exploring harbour, memory and human connection. Performed by an outstanding collective of singers and instrumentalists in an intimate chamber setting, Stormlight moves between the mystical and theatrical, the playful and unsettling — capturing something of the beauty, fragility and tension of the world we currently inhabit.