Aimed at instantly transporting concert-goers from the Baroque era to the tango halls of Argentina, its high point will be the fiendishly difficult etude “In Pursuit of a Mouse”, Dooley’s homage to “The Flight of the Bumblebee”. All the works are written in the “pastiche” mode he adopted after walking away from the atonality of contemporary classical music.

Rising star on the Canberra piano scene, James Huntingford, plays the “Mouse” piece. He’s joined by a similarly luminous line-up, including pianist/composer Sally Greenaway (whose album has just been longlisted for the Australian Music Prize), pianist/entrepreneur Andrew Rumsey, Whitworth Roach People’s Choice-winner Aaron Chew and Emily Leong, a recent performance master’s graduate from Melbourne Conservatory.

Dooley, who released an independent jazz album with his duo In2Deep earlier this year, originally studied classical composition at Sydney Conservatorium, but turned to writing pop songs and jazz while never losing his passion for classical music.

“I love lyricism and harmony in music and am striving to blend that into a voice that is contemporary”, Dooley tells “CityNews”, and writing music in earlier styles seemed a way into that. Bach, Mozart and McCartney did it, so why not?

When listening to Dooley playing one of his pieces, a colleague had once commented: “That Bach is sounding good”, and that inspired him to create his 11-piece “temporal sonic scrapbook”.

Describing the works as “fun and fiery”, Dooley doesn’t take himself too seriously and to prove it, he’s planning a piano encore called “Tango in Chic”.

“Anachronisms – a composer’s journey through time”, at All Saints Church, Ainslie, 8pm, November 28, bookings to mikedooleymusic@gmail.com or tickets at the door.