Christmas, Limelight

Joe Geia’s wonderfully evocative exploration of Indigenous identity Yil Lull, sandwiched between Byrd’s 16th-century Lullaby and local composer Brian Kogler’s Pie Jesu, encapsulated the wide-ranging emotional scope of The Song Company’s Lully Lulla. A thoughtful programme that explored themes of dispossession, grief and violence, Lully Lulla never felt just edifying, with the six singers – three women and three men – along with conductor Antony Pitts providing just enough lightness of touch to make it go down a treat. Instead of a straight recital, here they presented English and Australian carols both old and new, stitched together in a kind of medieval nativity narrative through spoken dialogue from The Pageant of the Company of Shearman and Tailors.

The Song Company. Photo: supplied.

As always, the singers produced a rich, full sound that belied the handful of people onstage, shifting from moods of sorrow to joy to playfulness at the drop of a hat. While their spoken dialogue was more well-drilled than spontaneously realised or lived in, the beauty and freshness they brought to old favourites such as Byrd’s A Carowle for Christmas Day...