Above : Percussionist and Taikoz member Kerryn Joyce performed in session alongside Kirsty McCahon, pictured below.

This entertainment concept, which took the Musica Viva audience away from the regular concert stage venue was a clear success.

It brought the intimacy of chamber music to a space within an historic building, namely the National Herbarium of NSW’s lecture theatre. As an audience we walked through the working spaces of the herbarium’s archives and down stairwells to arrive at the lecture space.

Following the session experience, with the range of carefully chosen music freshly sown in our memories, we were treated to a night time walk through the surrounding Royal Botanic Gardens to one of its main gates.

This event was not accompanied by a typically detailed Musica Viva printed programme. This allowed greater focus on the two session artists, bassist Kirsty McCahon with percussionist, composer and taiko specialist Kerryn Joyce.

The pair delivered a superb and continued commentary, bursting with personal references and their engaging personalities. During this event with its eclectic blend of musical styles and instrumental pairing the duo spoke to us with the enduring ease of any chilled session musician or cabaret sweetheart.

The session began with more atmosphere to follow on from our excursion through the Herbarium. Kerryn Joyce’s composition for Japanese side flute and violone was a spellbinding start to the collection of short works soon to be laid humbly before us. The slow procession by the flute-playing Joyce from the rear of the room to the stage to join her fellow musician was a spellbinding moment.

The heightened sense of evenly paced calm in this work reverberated in the space. Joyce’s composition, written especially for this event, was crafted beautifully to overlap the contrasting timbres of the ancient instruments.The atmospheric moments continued throughout the session, with playing alternating between works for solo and duo instruments.

Early music superstar McMahon led the solo assault. On the violone she delivered the evocative complexities of composer  Tobias Hume’s popular music from the start of the seventeenth century. The demonstrative and innovative nature of any musical event described as a ‘session’ was here realised in our exposure to the expressive possibilities of the replica violone when treated as a solo instrument.

Another experiential highlight of the event for those assembled was Joyce’s tour de force performance on taiko set. Playing her Taikoz mentor Ian Clearworth’s stunning piece, Dedication, Joyce showed us the capabilities of this percussion set up in Clearworth’s work of  commanding drama and nuance expanded from its original single drum format.

The session also featured the juxtaposition of short works from many periods and schools of musical thought, with particular celebration and display of the contemporary idiom. McCahon’s inclusion and realisation of Luciano Berio’s Psy for double bass (1989) was historically significant as the contemporary master’s only solo piece for the instrument.

Kerryn Joyce’s work on the vibraphone as soloist exposed us to great percussion virtuosity. When combined with the double bass the pair brought us unique tone colours and charming works by living composers. Arrangements of For Julia by Robert Davidson and Adrift by Elena Kats-Chernin worked well for this duo, delighting the audience.

McCahon and Joyce concluded the experience on bass and vibraphone introducing us to two movements from US composer Dave Anderson’s humorous Seven Double Bass Duets (1996), in arrangement for their session blend. Both Blew Cheeze and Rush Hour were fine caricatures with which to send us away from this special concert in a non-concert hall location.

Musica Viva’s new Sessions formula works well. The format offers much in the way of audience discovery and excitement. If the spontaneity and collaborative possibilities witnessed at this first Sessions event is indicative of the future, then the Sessions will shine bright wherever they are held and no doubt expand the current Musica Viva concert hall audience base.