When the magic is just right, a certain type of live performance can leave you spellbound. A sense of collective awe steals over you, and for minutes or hours – or even just a matter of seconds – you’re suspended in a state of light, expansive, thoughtless oblivion. Eventually, the music stops, or a cough somewhere in the audience snaps you back into reality, but you’ve tapped into something magical, and you leave the room feeling as though everything in the universe has recalibrated into place – that each cell in your body is exactly where it's supposed to be. I’m sure that this kind of transcendent experience is within reach at pop concerts – like when Taylor Swift turned Qudos Bank Arena into a frenzy, or friendship bracelets and glitter, and when fred again.. brought his euphoric breed of EDM to the Opera House for a surprise show that caused mass hysteria among teenage boys and middle-aged mums alike. But for me, that feeling is most easily accessed through classical and orchestral music.
To call it a sense of calm would be reductive, because to witness the synchronous magic brought to life by chamber musicians or carried away by the ethereal melodies of a classically trained pianist evokes so much more than relaxation. Sure, the slow, mesmeric effect of classical music isn’t for everyone. I may be flying the flag for disproportionately young classical music enthusiasts, but I’m not in the majority. At most of the chamber orchestra shows I attend at the City Recital Hall and the Sydney Opera House, the audience is made up primarily of people a few generations my senior – people who have spent their lives benefiting from classical music, and refusing to give it up.
“We have about a 90 per cent retention rate with our memberships. Most people who become a member sign up year after year after year,” Caitlin Benetatos, Head of Communications at the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) tells me.
Widely regarded as Australia's most progressive orchestra, the ACO has been facilitating magic through music for 50 years (it celebrated its fiftieth birthday last night, with a spectacular showcase at its historic harbourside home). But as the team at the ACO will admit, most subscribers are from an older demographic. As the tastes of Sydney’s audiences change, so too must its cultural output – and the ACO is doing exactly that. With multi-disciplinary musician, composer and creative visionary Richard Tognetti at the helm as Artistic Director, the ACO has been redefining what classical and chamber music can look (and sound) like for decades. Back in 2020, Tognetti told Time Out that getting the attention of younger listeners is one of his main motivations in his role. He doesn’t do that through targeted social media ads or younger-skewing marketing ploys (though it’s important to note that people under 30 can snag $35 tickets to any ACO show), but through producing work that flips the script on what people expect from an orchestral performance.
“Creating challenges outside of the classical repertoire, and working with people who aren’t in the classical music world, that’s what whets my appetite,” Tognetti told us.
For their 50th year, the ACO is doing exactly that – with an ambitious, genre-bending program that that features the dulcet tones of cabaret and drag phenomenon Le Gateau Chocolat (as seen in Bark of Millions at the Sydney Opera House), South African cellist and singer Abel Selaocoe, a series of gala screenings of the ACO's critically acclaimed film collaboration Mountain, and five world premieres (from Nigel Westlake, Patkop, David Lang, Holly Harrison and Valentin Silvestrov). In May of 2025, world-renowned theremin virtuoso Carolina Eyck will take to the stage alongside the ACO for a series of shows titled Bach to The Beach Boys and beyond. If you don’t know what a theremin is, you won’t be alone – the energy-triggered electronic instrument is one of the world’s most avant-garde – and this kooky instrument showing up so early in the 2025 Season is a reflection of what we can expect from the ACO for its next 50 years.
“It used to be that contemporary music was classical contemporary music – the European avant garde, music that people didn’t really want to listen to. A lot of those fences are down for some people, but they’re still up for some people. And for me, it’s an open field – not to go and wander through other people’s musical fields feels to me like a shame. We’re only here for a short amount of time, I want to know what other people are doing and listening to. Our programming and what we play reflects that,” Tognetti explains.
For the ACO’s 2025 season, we can expect rousing renditions of violin concertos, yes, but we can also expect dance collaborations, drag shows, and cinematic one-person performances. The program isn’t about shoving orchestral music down people’s throats, it’s about presenting it in a way that meets the audience where they are, and in doing so, expanding their horizons.
You can check out the ACO’s 2025 program over here. Events will sell out (especially the more obscure ones), so don't say we didn't warn you.
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