A Journey through Light and Sound: Chamber Quartet

Enjoy a live chamber quartet performing well-loved classical works, accompanied by sweeping landscape projections that surround the space.

The chamber quartet will bring a program of well-known and much-loved classical works to the MAP mima Cube, filling the architectural space with resonant strings and expressive ensemble playing. The intimacy of chamber music meets the expansiveness of immersive projection, creating a rare encounter between tradition and contemporary media.

As the quartet performs, the Cube’s 360-degree projection screens will transform into shifting landscapes, vast mountain ranges, dense forests, open plains, and atmospheric skies. Each visual sequence is thoughtfully paired with the musical selections, designed to echo, amplify, and respond to the emotional currents of the performance. The result is a concert environment where the music’s textures, harmonies, and rhythms are mirrored and extended by the surrounding imagery.

Rather than viewing a stage from a fixed position, audiences will find themselves enveloped by the performance, with sound and visuals unfolding across all sides of the Cube. This layered, multisensory approach offers a fresh way to encounter familiar chamber repertoire, inviting listeners to not only hear the music but to inhabit it.

The event promises a contemplative, transportive experience, an evening in which landscape, light, and live performance merge to create a concert unlike any other in the region’s cultural calendar.

PERFORMERS

Jennifer StGeorge has been immersed in the music field as performer, educator and researcher since her undergraduate studies at Melbourne University. As a flautist she has played in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the State Orchestra of Victoria. In the Hunter, and across Australia and France, she has performed in innumerable symphony, opera, ballet and chamber performances. She has taught in many schools and universities, and is the author of an award-winning PhD thesis on instrumental music education.

Elizabeth Holowell OAM commenced her career as a foundation member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and as a member of the William Hennessy String Quartet. She is also an internationally acclaimed teacher of violin and viola having held the position of Head of Strings in Universities in Australia and New Zealand. Her students have been prize-winners in major competitions and have graduated to leading orchestral and teaching positions around the world. Elizabeth has released several CD recordings of Australasian works for violin and piano. Her most recent CD, released by Centaur, USA, draws upon her specialism in Viennese classical performance practice in a recording of the Schubert Violin Sonatas with renowned fortepianist, Erin Helyard.

Anthea Scott-Mitchell studied the cello with Janos Starker in Bloomington (USA), with Paul Tortelier in San Francisco, and at Switzerland's International Menuhin Music Academy with Radu Aldulescu and Pierre Fournier. She was Co-principal cellist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Lysy Gstaad, Professoressa di Violoncello with Rome's Santa Cecilia Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein, principal cellist with the Camerata Strumentale di Santa Cecilia, and has been Guest Principal Cello with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Anthea became Senior Lecturer in Cello at the University of Newcastle, and has recorded an album, ‘Into the Silence’ with pianist Erin Sweetman.

Catherine Sheng-Cooper is a graduate of Newcastle Conservatorium where she gained her Master of Music degree in violin performance in 2005. Her most influential teachers are Elizabeth Holowell OAM and Timur Yakubov. Catherine is passionate about orchestra and ensemble playing and has been the concertmaster for Opera Hunter and the Lake Macquarie Philharmonic Orchestra for the past 5 years. She loves teaching at Heritage and Macquarie Colleges as well as at her healthy home studio.

MAP mima is located in Speers Point Park, off Park Street, on the edge of Lake Macquarie. MAP mima is accessible by ramp with accessible toilets. MAP can be reached easily from the lake foreshore cycleway, the water, or by public transport. There is plenty of parking for cars, and buses with accessible spaces available, onsite and in the surrounding parklands.

Autumn Serenades is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW, Lake Macquarie City Council, and the Multi-Arts Pavilion, mima.