Divisi Chamber Singers: The Turn

Exploring the intrigue of madrigals.

Divisi is a youth-led not-for-profit organisation that supports early-career creative artists. Divisi strives to break down established norms of classical music through commissioning and performing innovative and creative works and projects. Their recent program ‘Compose Queer’ was released to wide acclaim and led to the release of the first ever complete album of Australian classical music by queer composers, entitled Spectrum.

About the concert

Their performance in Primrose Potter Salon explores the intrigue of madrigals, taking six narrators’ individual interpretations and coordinating them into a beautiful, cohesive story. Divisi Chamber Singers will take four hundred years of madrigal storytelling tradition and weave masterworks with contemporary comparisons. Ben Rowarth’s The Turn, an Australian premiere, gives further context to Monteverdi’s Lamento D’Arianna. Gavin Bryars’ madrigals shed more light on ancient poetry with intricate contemporary harmony.

Challenging its singers’ virtuosic abilities, Divisi seeks to provide audiences with an experience of storytelling that transcends time and style, telling ancient stories in modern ways.