Music / Old Airs, Luminescence Chamber Singers & Roland Peelman. At Drill Hall Gallery, November 1. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

For this concert the Luminescence Chambers Singers and their musical director AJ America, have been working with Roland Peelman, well known for his work with vocal music.

For the past 10 years he was director of the Canberra International Music Festival, and for 25 years before that musical director of the Song Company. The printed program was vague about what his exact role was in developing this concert, but he gave a short, spoken introduction before sitting down in front of the singers to conduct much of the performance and adding occasional percussion.

The program was 15, mostly quite short, works ranging from the oldest known song (with lyrics and notation together) from 2000 years ago to an arrangement of a song by Nardi Simpson, half of First Nations duo The Stiff Gins that was arranged this year by Luminescence member Dan Walker. In between were a Georgian folk song (the Caucasus Georgia, not the American one), some Medieval and Renaissance vocal works, a few very modern pieces mixed in with a familiar French cabaret song, a reworked shape-note hymn and a Norwegian pop song to finish.

As we have come to expect, the singing was exemplary. The six singers are all fine soloists but with a wonderful ability to blend and find a balance between them. Most of the program utilised all six voices, but with a few for just three of them in various combinations. Most effective was the Georgian folk song, Tsintskaro, for the three male voices using the distinctive Georgian harmonies, with bass Alasdair Stretch taking the lead from the stage area with Lucien Fischer and Dan Walker behind the audience for an exhilarating spacial stereo effect.

Similarly, the next work, Evening, Morning, Day by American composer David Lang featured the three female voices, mezzo AJ America and sopranos Veronica Milroy and Rachel Mink. The two sopranos faced each other from across the performance area with America in the centre, again enhancing the separation.

The Drill Hall Gallery is a fine venue for this style of music, albeit only with an audience of 60 or 70. It has a bright and reverberant acoustic with a sense of immersion in the music which suits this very fine ensemble well.