Unique Elbow Room Concert celebrates Melbourne composers

Melbourne Composers’ League | Elbow Room Concert

October 4, 2025, Church of All Nations, Carlton, VIC

The Elbow Room concert was an event so large that it could be viewed as two separate concerts. I am reviewing just one half and it included eight works.

The compositions and instrumentation were extremely varied and led to an afternoon of music with great contrast. The concert also provided a snapshot of numerous different musical styles from this wonderful collective of Melbourne composers and the extremely large audience found much to enjoy and to discuss.

Australia’s leading trumpet and guitar duo, Joel Brennan and Ken Murray premiered Paul Moulatlet‘s ‘Erratic Orbit’ a work with driving rhythms and virtuosic writing for both the performers. The music jumped and jived and was a crowd pleaser from the outset. Moulatlet can also weave a tender lyrical line, but really this work is all about energy, and tons of it. The performers introduced a myriad of stunning instrumental colours with guitar distortion and alternate valve trilling on the trumpet, making this a work I hope to hear again soon. Brennan and Murray are stars and their obvious joy when playing is infectious.

Whenever the flute legend Peter Sheridan performs it is a treat and in Philip Czaplowski’s ‘monologue IV’ for solo bass flute the audience was captivated by the sheer elegance of playing and the way Czaplowski spun a story that drew the listener into his artistic vision. Lines of music full of rich harmonic sounds from the bass flute filled the perfect acoustic of the Church of all Nations.

The compositions of Brendan Colbert inhabits a rarefied field of music and is always intellectually engaging. Pianist Peter Dumsday was an astonishing interpreter of ‘Contre-Temps‘ with an extraordinary amount of notes that led the listener down passageways of brilliant intensity only leavened by a few moments of calmness.

It is the first time I have come across the music of Vincent Giles and I am delighted to have heard this maker of music who, like a lyrebird, draws on many influences and inputs to make compositions that although fresh have immediate impact and acceptance. Pianist Gene Cleary gave ‘Orr Net’ a perfectly weighted performance.

Two composers were represented by ensemble works that were slightly larger. Tim Jayatilaka‘s ‘Bilby’ for saxophone quartet was boppy and jazzy riffs, all very tonal, well performed by the Ocean Saxophone Quartet.

The CORP Vocal Ensemble sang numerous movements by Alexandra Uitdenbogerd displaying effective writing for the six member group with lots of changes in timbre.

Gary McKie‘s musique concrete work ‘Sirens’ Lament of Beauty, Seduction, Deception and Oblivion’ opened with an exquisite soundworld of distorted cicada songs that he developed in falling and rising layers of sound. McKie controls his material with the hand of one who is not only an expert in creating electroacoustic music but as a composer who explores colour,  form and is inventive all the way.

Continued here >>