Omega Ensemble

Omega Ensemble presents a concert of music by Missy Mazzoli, Thomas Adès, Samuel Adams and Christopher Cerrone.

Titled after a phrase from Milton's Paradise Lost, Missy Mazzoli's Dark with Excessive Bright is a surreal and evocative work. While loosely based in Baroque idioms, this piece slips between string techniques from several centuries, all while twisting a pattern of repeated chords beyond recognition.

Samuel Adams' Sundial uses repeating rhythmic ideas to explore shades of light, increasing and decreasing in intensity, as if 'someone were moving a light dimmer up and down'. Originally written for percussion and string quartet, this new version is arranged for Omega Ensemble by the composer.

Hailed as one of the composer’s “finest recent achievements” (The Guardian), Thomas Ades’ clarinet quintet Alchymia is given its Australian premiere, with careful and delicate lines emerging like tendrils growing not towards the sun but down into darkness.

Originally commissioned by Omega Ensemble in 2022, Grammy Award-nominated composer Christopher Cerrone's Nervous Systems is expanded in a new arrangement that takes the work to new heights of intensity and textural exploration.