Musica Viva | Hollywood Songbook
8 May, 2025, QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane, QLD
I confess I’ve attended many, many worthy Musica Viva concerts, but I’ve never been to one where the soloist, in this case soprano Ali McGregor, makes numerous costume calls. Every time she returned to the stage she wore a different last century look- somewhere between the 1920’s and 40’s era – think Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe – all a glitter with sequins, floor brushing hems and furs.
Effort was made with the visuals. Umbrella photography reflector lights made a horseshoe shape and assumed hues of greens, reds and blues and illuminated the narrative of each programmed item transforming the concert hall’s formality into a cabaret ambience.
Germany’s Signum Saxophone Quartet with Blaž Kemperle (soprano saxophone), Jacopo Taddei (alto saxophone), Alan Lužar (tenor saxophone), and Aram Poghosyan (baritone saxophone) performed within a circle of floored fairy lights.
Nor have I experienced a saxophone unit of such astonishing ensemble mastery and with such an exquisitely honed sound. Precise, expressive with stunning melodic shaping, these players are breathtaking speedsters. The quartet’s lightning parry and poste as one takes the lead, nuances a harmony, interjects a micro riff or the four of them ease into a unified radiance surprised and thrilled the audience.
Saxophones, although wind instruments, are made of brass and are well suited to explore a melting pot of genres. Eerily they were also able to assume the sound print of other instruments including brass and strings. This was especially apparent if you closed your eyes.
The Signum have superb stamina. On stage for the duration they either accompanied McGregor’s solo excursions or the ensemble journeyed through marvellously, cinematic deliveries of Stravinsky, Bernstein and Copland with repertoire which reflected the political tensions and social unrest during these composers’ lifetimes.
The QPAC concert hall wasn’t as packed as it once might have been for the formerly more traditional Musica Viva fare of string quartets and piano trios, but there was a respectable crowd which will surely grow as the new direction of this company’s curation takes root.
McGregor was a soprano with Opera Australia until she switched to cabaret and her show ‘Late Nite Variety Nite’ is now a fixture at the Melbourne International Comedy Show.
Her strong-voiced, diction-clear, silvery and belted iterations of Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen’s ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ (from The Wizard of Oz) and George Gershwin’s show-stopper ‘The Man I Love’ with tasteful, insightful back up from Sigmun Quartet were excellent.
To be picky, sometimes the tempo for the songs begged for a slightly faster tempo but the slower pacing spotlighted the marvellous timbre of McGregor’s voice.
Peddling nostalgia and drama these musicians invested enormous energy, personality and superb virtuosity in this heady combination of repertoire and sound makers. A most enjoyable entertainment of finesse and wild surprise.
Images courtesy of Musica Viva Australia. Photos by Peter Hislop.
