Music / Flight, the Oriana Chorale. At Wesley Uniting Church,  July 27. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

For this concert, themed around the idea of flight and flying, the Oriana Chorale presented an hour and a quarter or so of, with one exception, contemporary vocal music full of surprises and delights.

The exception was a 16th century Italian madrigal which fitted seamlessly into the rest of the program being sung immediately before a work by American choral composer Eric Whitacre, Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine, which references renaissance vocal music.

The first half of the concert was the choir by itself, with the opening work Butterflies, by Australian composer Mathew Orlovich, a delightful work of wonderfully complex rhymes and harmonies constantly shifting with a marvellous last chord. This was skilfully conducted by Olivia Swift, otherwise an alto in the choir.

For the second half of the performance the choir was joined by pianist and composer Sally Whitwell where they sang two of her works, with Whitwell accompanying on piano. She also accompanied English composer Kerry Andrew’s Rhymes and Charms for Fly-Away Things which blended nursery rhymes and English folk song into the vocal scoring.

When the choir left for a short break after the first half, Whitwell introduced herself and performed a short, as yet un-named, work, composed that very morning (as she does each day) This cleverly morphed into the introduction to her A Hundred Thousand Birds with the singers entering the hall from the back and side chirping and whistling random bird calls in an excellent piece of musical theatre.

Whitwell has a skill in writing piano accompaniments which support the often quite complex vocal lines without interfering with them, yet adding to the overall effect. This was also apparent in her second work Flying, where anthemic vocal lines led to one silly line of text.

The choir rounded out the evening with Rocket Man by Elton John in an arrangement that both captured the original feel yet turned it into an interesting choral work, with Whitwell channelling Elton on the piano and a clarinet obligato from a moonlighting soprano. A fine way to end a most satisfying concert.