2025 Season
Music at McClelland
Music at McClelland is generously supported by Igor Zambelli, Mary-Jane Gething AO and The Robert Salzer Foundation. It is a seated event and is held in the Sarah and Baillieu Myer Education Pavilion.
Music at McClelland 2025 will be held on the third Sunday of the month, 2.30pm to 4pm, from February to November (April will be be the fourth Sunday due to Easter)
Message from our Curator
Music at McClelland is back with sonic sculptural splendour in 2025, showcasing the astonishing talents of brilliant genre-bridging musicians, up close and personal, overlooking the magical bushland setting of the sculpture park. With every show different from the last, you’ll be satiated by a degustation of melodious morsels - from ancient to right now, from anthemic favourites to cutting-edge creativity - in a joyous celebration of scintillating sounds.
— Monica Curro
Message from our Artistic + Executive Director
McClelland is proud to deliver the fourth season of the Music at McClelland program between February and November 2025 through the generous support of founding donor Igor Zambelli, Mary-Jane Gething AO, and The Robert Salzer Foundation. Each year, this carefully crafted program by Curator Monica Curro presents some of the leading talent in professional music in Australia in our beautiful Sarah & Baillieu Myer Education Pavilion. We look forward to welcoming you in 2025.
— Lisa Byrne
Click here to buy a Full or Half subscription to our 2025 concerts
$40 for Adult tickets
$180 for Half subscription or 5 ticket bundle
$330 for Full subscription
Multi-award winning singer, songwriter and comedian Jude Perl has created a name for herself by writing and performing hilarious, yet brutally honest, stream-of-consciousness style lyrics, set to undeniably catchy and well-crafted songs.
In a very exciting one-off show, Jude will perform songs from her diverse catalogue of original songs, as well as brand new material from her upcoming EP ‘Breathing Again’. Performing with multi-instrumentalist Brendan Tsui and a special appearance from MSO violinist Sarah Curro, don’t miss this rare chance to see these world class musicians performing together.
Acclaimed Australian composer/lyricist and pianist Monique diMattina presents concert highlights from her new stage musical, STELLA: The Miles Franklin Story.
Monique will be joined by two of STELLA’s star cast members for this intimate McClelland preview, before the musical debuts in theatres later in 2025.
Although the Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, most Australians are unaware that Miles was a woman, let alone the details of her extraordinary life. Weaving songs, stories and Franklin’s own words, STELLA follows Franklin’s Snowy Mountains childhood to fame as the young author of My Brilliant Career, years battling for women’s suffrage in the USA and UK, WWI field work, creative struggles and legacy as a trailblazing champion of Australian art, conservation and culture.
Didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton and powerhouse violinist Véronique Serret blend traditional songlines and modern storytelling in a collaboration featuring the lyric poetry of William’s mother Aunty Delmae Barton - a message of peace and love carried by the eagle spirit.
Barton and Serret welcome you to experience their unique, meditative soundworld- Serret’s violins and Barton’s prodigious didgeridoo and guitar come together with powerful, soaring vocals and ethereal loops and electronic effects, in a distinctive evocation of our uniquely Australian landscape. The power of connection to place.
HEARTLAND was nominated for an ARIA in 2023 and features their much loved works Kalkani, Didge Fusion and of course the single Heartland.
Polyphonic Voices is a Melbourne-based chamber choir under the artistic direction of Michael Fulcher.
Since its inception in 2013, the choir has become renowned for its polished, innovative, and engaging performances in non-traditional concert venues. Polyphonic Voices presents a wide variety of music – both accompanied and unaccompanied – from the classical choral tradition, but also arrangements of music from jazz, pop, folk and other alternative genres.
The choir has collaborated with many outstanding conductors, composers, and ensembles, including the Grammy Award-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the Hilltop Hoods to name a few. Polyphonic Voices has also had the privilege of commissioning and premiering a number of works by leading Australian composers such as Joseph Twist.
Melba Opera Trust, a legacy of the visionary soprano Dame Nellie Melba, delivers Australia’s leading development program for exceptional young opera singers and repetiteurs.
Nellie once said ‘in order to succeed in opera, you have to engage in the business of singing. A beautiful voice is not enough.’ This is at the heart of Melba’s philosophy: the artists are trained to be more than a voice, to be equipped with the skills they need to build sustainable careers.
The Melba Program, a year-long scholarship-funded program, supports artists from around Australia through a bespoke course of artistic development, mentoring in business, professional and personal skill development, and performance experience.
Following in Nellie’s footsteps, many of Melba’s talented alumni are realising their dreams and performing in opera houses around the world.
Join us to hear these future stars!
Marshall McGuire and Genevieve Lacey have performed together across the world, from prestigious venues and festivals in Moscow, Paris, and London, to the Lindau International Convention for Nobel Laureates, and further afield to shearing sheds, football ovals, and remote properties in Australia.
Their 2021 album Bower celebrated their more than 20-year collaboration, winning the ARIA for Best Classical Recording. This performance takes excerpts from Bower and mines their extensive catalogue of music for the exquisite combination of recorders and harp, with compositions from sumptuous Renaissance and Baroque courts to contemporary Australian works written especially for them.
Musician and arts advocate Genevieve Lacey creates, performs and curates. Her works include Pleasure Garden (a listening garden), Recorder Queen (a semi-animated documentary film), and Breathing Space (a permanent sound installation for the National Museum of Australia). As
a recorder virtuoso, Genevieve appears with Australian and international orchestras, including performances as a concerto soloist in the Royal Albert Hall for BBC Proms, at the London Jazz Festival and on Thursday Island with Australian indigenous ensemble The Black Arm Band.
Marshall McGuire is one of Australia’s leading performers, with a special interest in baroque and contemporary music. He’s commissioned and premiered more than 100 new works for harp and has been a member of the ELISION ensemble since 1988. Marshall has performed in caves, on
the beach at Orpheus Island, at the Chateau de Chantilly, and in a 12thcentury chapel in Wales. Playing music in exotic and beautiful locations is his passion.
Directed by celebrated Australian violinist and concertmaster Sophie Rowell, the MCO is Victoria’s preeminent professional chamber orchestra.
In more than 50 performances each season, the orchestra brings leading Australian musicians together in inspiring programs of uncompromising artistic quality, finesse, and passion.
MUSE
Invented in the parlours of 1920s Paris, ‘Exquisite Corpse’ is a game where each artist depicts a section of a work, revealing only the last portion as a clue for the next. This game has been reimagined for the string quartet, resulting in three new whimsical works capturing the fantasy of their performers and listeners alike.
The creativity stimulated through collaboration bears great relevance to the art of chamber music making, with each performer contributing their own voice in harmony to those around them. MCO longtime collaborators come together to present this concert of inspired creativity.
The brainchild of MCO cellist Blair Harris, this program seamlessly blends works of old and new worlds, igniting the listeners’ imagination. From the Baroque masters on the streets of Buenos Aires to ancient folk melodies dancing with the sounds of 21st-century Australia, this concert promises to cast a new light on the great tradition of the string quartet.
Unholy Rackett is a Renaissance wind consort specialising in the curtal or dulcian, the Renaissance ancestor of the modern bassoon, as well as the eponymous rackett, a bizarre, extinct double reed instrument.
The curtal was one of the most versatile instruments in use from 1550 to 1700 for every genre of religious and secular music. It was one of very few Renaissance woodwinds which survived the transition to the new Baroque style of music, before morphing into the more familiar bassoon in the mid 17th century.
Comprised of Jackie Newcomb, Brock Imison and Simon Rickard, with a shifting tide of guest artists, Unholy Rackett recreates soundscapes familiar to Renaissance and Baroque ears but sadly neglected by the early music movement today.
In 1960 Astor Piazzolla put together the ‘First Quintet’ – an ensemble comprised of a violin, an electric guitar, a double bass and a piano, with Piazzolla himself performing on bandoneón. The formation remains the most authentic expression of the Nuevo Tango style.
Scottish accordion virtuoso James Crabb is Australia’s leading Piazzolla authority, and has long dreamed of establishing his own quintet. With Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Andrew Haveron on violin, 2019 Freedman Classical Fellow Rohan Dasika on double bass, young jazz superstar Joshua Meader on guitar, and award-winning pianist Stefan Cassomenos at the keyboard, this is about as good as it gets.
Together they play music by Tomás Gubitsch, Gustavo Beytelmann, Antonio Agri and José Carli in a program framed by iconic works of Astor Piazzolla.
Just try to resist the urge to dance.
Penny Quartet have gained a reputation as a driven and multifaceted voice in Australian chamber music. Founded in early 2014, the group brings a vibrant approach to their performances
across the country.
In their inaugural year, they were nominated for the Freedman Fellowship award, were the recipients of the John and Rosemary Macleod Travelling Fellowship and winners of the Australian National Academy of Music Chamber Music Competition. Since then, the Penny Quartet have been an ensemble in residence at the Four Winds Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, presented independent recital tours across Australia as well as Featured Artists with Musica Viva Australia’s regional touring program. They made their international debut as full scholarship holders at the St. Lawrence String Quartet seminar at Stanford, CA. Penny Quartet regularly collaborate and record with various composers and musicians, both independently and as Festival artists. They have been part of the ‘Local Heroes’ subscription series at the Melbourne Recital Centre since late 2017 and are two-time recipients of the MRC Contemporary Masters Award.
With diverse individual backgrounds and experiences across the globe, the group brings together years of knowledge and training to create a mature quartet sound. The Penny Quartet’s repertoire is wide and varied; a love for the core quartet repertoire is intertwined with an urge to explore less charted territory.
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