2024 Culture Tracks Performance Program Feature: The ACO Collective

A concert that will set your heart aflight with music full of beauty and spirit.

Yarra Ranges Council and the Australian Chamber Orchestra present

ACO Collective: The Lark Ascending
Directed by Helena Rathbone

With its soaring melodies and joyful trills, Ralph Vaughan Williams creates a radiant portrait of a lark in flight, trailing a silver chain of sound as it rises. Bound to the ground, we can only bask in its beauty. ACO Collective plays this eternal favourite as the centrepiece of an uplifting program directed by ACO Principal Violin Helena Rathbone.

Rathbone has guided the ACO Collective since its founding in 2007, offering audiences across the country the opportunity to hear Australia’s brightest young musicians in concert alongside members of the ACO.

The program spans five centuries from Henry Purcell’s Fantasia Upon One Note to Max Richter’s cinematic On the Nature of Daylight. Continuing its commitment to fostering Australian voices, the ACO Collective will premiere a new commission by award-winning Australian composer Anne Cawrse, sought after for her appealing, approachable sound.

The concert closes with Suk’s glowing Serenade for Strings. Inspired by Dvorák and Brahms, it is the sound of pure happiness. Chosen for their beauty and spirit, these six works will set your heart aflight.

“The Australian Chamber Orchestra’s emerging talent arm, ACO Collective, is blazing a promising trail into the artform’s next era.” – THE AGE

“The collective sound of ACO Collective is exquisite and homogenous, a tribute to the musicians of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, who have sought these rare talents.” – THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD