Music / “Of the Body”, Luminescence Chamber Singers. At ANU Drill Hall Gallery, March 30. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

IN a triumph of sheer excellence, Luminescence Chamber Singers on Thursday night presented a concert of rare depth.

With a mission to explore the full potential of singing, the artists, under the guidance of the ubiquitous Roland Peelman and the hand drum that he used to whip them into a passion at times, they explored the range of the very oldest musical instrument – the human voice.

This imaginatively-programmed concert was full of light and shade, with polyphonic harmonies, beautiful breakout solos, plainsong, spoken word, and even humming, popping, droning and other vocal sounds to emulate musical instruments of the lesser kind.

The 17 separate musical items in the concert ranged though ravishingly beautiful Renaissance chansons by Dominique Phinot and Adriaen Willaert, a motet by Thomas Tallis, indie-folk songs with quirky lyrics arranged by Peelman himself and even a kind of musical “Kama Sutra” by Gerard Brophy, whose lyrics were not translated for fear of offending us with their naughtiness.

A comic highlight was Orlande De Lassus’s “Nose Dance”, a jaunty piece delivered with cheeky insouciance by the singers, which proved beyond doubt that German has the best words of insult – “Gschneizte, rotzig, butzig,” (Blown, snotty or dirty) went one description of noses.

The centrepiece of this concert was a new work by Canberra tenor, conductor and composer Dan Walker, “Of The Body”.

Cleverly interspersed with the other repertoire, it avoided any sense of a laborious song-cycle where you find yourself counting the numbers.

While the opening part, the Introit, set to classical Italian words by Petrarch, shows Walker’s debt to early Renaissance music, elsewhere his music was up-to-date and sometimes gently discordant as he mixed solo breakouts with complex, overlapping phraseology, and sometimes as in the final work, spoken word.

The words are important in everything Luminescence touches and were delivered with perfect clarity.

“Sara Sara”, set to words by the famous 17th century haiku master  Basho, looked at the hands of a Japanese woman, presumably dying shibori fabric, beginning with a ravishingly beautiful mezzo-soprano segment by Luminescence director, AJ America, before the other singers entered.

“In Caligaverunt Oculi Mei” (for mine eyes have seen thy salvation) he mixed pain and suffering with love through an early 20th century poem by Sara Teasdale, blended with plainsong chants from the Good Friday liturgy.

The finale, “How to Hold a Heart” was a surprise, with the text taken largely from newspaper tips on how to conduct oneself during transplantation surgery.

Prose recitations of the text were gradually and subtly enhanced by the sung word, the voices rising gradually until the concert ended on a quiet note of respect, with the words,  “Give the heart the reverence its deserves…My heart cannot die”.

Luminescence Chamber Singers is now funded by the ACT government, and this concert will travel to Wollongong and Sydney Opera House.