Presented as part of Brisbane Festival, Camerata: Your Eternal Memories was a rollercoaster concert, bringing the chamber orchestra together with national treasures Kate Miller-Heidke and Barbara Lowing to share memories and music with warmth and playful humour.
Inspired by John Tavener’s Eternal Memory for cello and strings, which featured towards the end of the concert, Camerata invited audiences to share their special memories and curated the concert programme to match these personal recollections. In his programme note, recently appointed Executive Director Dr Jay Byrnes wrote that this was a “bold reversal of a familiar process: rather than music triggering memory, we’re letting memory guide the music.”
In addition to words submitted from audiences, Camerata: Your Eternal Memories included excerpts from Clive James’ Unreliable Memoirs, Sam Everingham’s Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, and Michael Gow’s Australian coming-of-age play Away.
The concert began with Antonín Dvořák’s warm Serenade for Strings, after which Barbara Lowing entered the stage and settled into a corner that had been set up like a living room. Under the glow of a lamp, she told stories of the origins of Camerata, an inaugural performance at the Taabinga Homestead near Kingaroy in 1987, anecdotes from regional tours about instrument cases being mistaken for a coffin in the back of a ute, and many more. The stories sometimes overlapped and intertwined with the music.
Kate Miller-Heidke leant her otherworldly voice to the concert as well, including some of her well-known pop favourites Last Day on Earth and Zero Gravity. Miller-Heidke also performed the heartfelt finale of award-winning opera The Rabbits, which she composed, and brand-new works that she tied thematically to the stories shared in the concert.
The third movement from Mozart’s Cassation No.1 in G Major was searching but hopeful, rolling alongside Miss Jemima’s adventures with Cobb and Co. Anna Clyne’s elegy for her mother, Within Her Arms, was full of feeling and swelling drama, but also moments of such quiet that they incited untimely applause.
Your Eternal Memories drew on excerpts from submitted memories, including a recording of Artistic Director Brendan Joyce’s mother singing Arthur Sullivan’s Sorry Her Lot from the opera H.M.S. Pinafore. Camerata accompanied her, playing alongside the historical recording of voice and piano (and applause) from the Ayr Choral Society.
The first half of the concert concluded with Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter, a brief composition that uses a modified typewriter (and a desk bell, to echo the sound of the typewriter’s carriage return at the end of a line) as an instrument. Violinist Jonny Ng was seated at the typewriter, theatrically stretching his fingers before the piece began, tapping quickly on the keys throughout, and tossing the pages brightly into the air in conclusion. The Typewriter took the audience into an interval on a playful note, a sudden pivot from the memory preceding it: a recollection of sitting on the steps with mother and neighbour, hearing the laughter of a sister which can now only be heard in memory.
Following an interval, the concert continued with Arcangelo Corelli’s Christmas Concerto in G Minor, paired with Gwen’s monologue from Away, which is set during a 1960s Christmas holiday on the coast. Witold Lutoslawski’s Five Folk Melodies for string orchestra became the soundtrack to an extended recollection about the “dunny man” collecting full buckets from the outhouse and tripping over a bike in the driveway, full of excruciating tension that had the audience groaning and cringing in horror. Tavener’s dreamy and reflective Eternal Memory for Cello and Strings came next, with Camerata cellist Karol Kowalik positioned in the centre as the soloist.
Barbara Lowing continued to recount stories and memories between the musical works. Lowing brought her commanding stage presence, skill as a storyteller, and mastery of tension and comedic timing to each, whether the memory was about walking through ancient forests, listening to Van Morrison in a kombi van, or witnessing a fateful misstep by the “dunny man”. The concert ended on a humorous note with the tale of a tough bush cat named Cindy (and the Pink Panther theme).
Capturing many shades of memory and nostalgia, Camerata: Your Eternal Memories was a whirlwind of shifting emotions, beautiful music, and outstanding vocal performances in story and song.
Camerata: Your Eternal Memories was performed at the QPAC Concert Hall, South Bank, on 13 September 2025
For further information, visit the Brisbane Festival website
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