The Whitlams and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
7 March, 2026, QPAC, Brisbane, QLD
Hurray! In this mixed genre event with the celebrated Aussie band The Whitlams – the Queensland Symphony Orchestra was anything but a supplicant producing the cliché of a sustained string tone here and a brassy splash there. Instead, the QSO became a sound-enhancing, fire breathing theatrical lion.
At the start of the concert Tim Freedman walked onto the stage and sang Beauty in Me demonstrating his flair for nuanced storytelling. His vocals are reassuring, compelling, every word clearly executed and his charisma jolted the audience into paying attention.
Freedman is a generous performer; the way he turns to address the crowd, throws a glance of connection towards his drummer, the guitarists Jak Housden and Matthew Fell and he’s hyper-focussed on synchronising with the bigger classical band. No mean feat either because of the swift speeds and textural changes from dense to lightly orchestrated passages. The bittersweet, curated playlist was neatly woven together through the singer’s chatty threads spiked with humour as dry as the Simpson desert.
Orchestras have been pairing with box office generating artists for many years now but this concert was a cut above most partly because The Whitlams are practised in teaming up with classical ensembles and the superior arrangements which stressed meaning and heightened emotion, utilising the full gamut of orchestral colour and squeezing the juice from Freedman’s exquisite harmonic shifts was another impressive factor.
Freedman knows how crucial these arrangements are. Composer Sean O’ Boyle created the majority and Peter Sculthorpe, a friend of Freedman, penned a couple of others. One of these, Out the Back, became a gorgeous extended ensemble solo with transclucent shiny strings winding up with Sculthorpe’s trademark seagull cries. During this performance Freedman stood on the edge of the stage sipping a beer offering a glimpse of his more informal gigs in pubs and touring circuits. Housden’s riveting and syrupy guitar strains recalled a miaowing cat.
Conductor Guy Noble is a very fine conductor who commands the highest of standards but he’s also a prankster and larger-than-life character. A side-splitting highlight was when Noble sang, at Freedman’s insistence, his ‘favourite’ Ghostbusters song complete with outlandish wiggling and shaky hand moves. A laugh-out-loud sequence.
It wasn’t perfect balancing wise; the guitars out front of stage were not always given enough prominence and depth and the exuberance of the orchestra, ably led by concertmaster Johnny van Gend, sometimes grew too strong. Freedman’s changeable voice and the appealing way he switches between singing and oratory, belted and softly intoned phrasing as a charming crooning narrator deserves to be heard.
Highlights definitely included the 1997 hit No Aphrodisiac, which rocked with a crowd-stirring sentiment in this entertaining, stylish and uplifting collaboration.
