★★★★ Neat programme makes Gill’s 6×3 add up to rather more than 18.

Great Hall, Sydney University
September 7, 2015

Richard Gill, conductor, music educator and long-term banger of the drum for Australian choral composition and performance, is the incoming Music Director of Sydney Chamber Choir and on the evidence of this intriguingly planned concert they could well be onto a very good thing indeed. Entitled Six Times Three, the bold and imaginative programme added up to more than anything as prosaic as eighteen.

The concert came in conveniently bite-sized chunks and had no interval (a grand idea in itself), and moved from the present to the past, from Australia on to France and Renaissance Italy. The 23-strong choir, inclined to be a rather serious-minded ensemble, seemed more relaxed than I recall – hopefully a sign of the pleasure of engaging with such wide-ranging repertoire and a passionate new conductor.

The best came first with two sets of Australian threes – what Gill boasted was 40 minutes of our own but hoped that “one day we’ll say it’s just music”. There was a theme of time and bells in the works by three Australian men that opened the programme. Dan Walker’s...