Music / The Elegy Project. At All Saints Church Ainslie, June 14. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

This is a performance project put together by local musicians Kimberly Steele and Christopher Pound around the idea of elegies, music which commemorates the dead.

With a fairly broad interpretation of the idea, the concert drew on classical, jazz, folk and popular music to create a varied musical tapestry around the theme.

The performers were 15 local musicians, mostly music teachers in the ACT public and private school system aged in their 20s and 30s. Most are singers, forming a ten voice choir for the performance, along with a three-piece jazz band (piano, bass, drums) with jazz vocalist Rachael Thoms. Co-director of the project Kimberly Steele contributed two solo piano works.

The concert was divided into three parts of five works, each a mix of choral works, jazz and a bit of solo piano, sometimes interestingly mixed up.

The opening work was Chopin’s Funeral March Prelude, Op 28, performed first on piano by Steele and then in a wordless choral arrangement from the singers. This was followed by Thoms and the jazz trio with Lonely Woman, a song by American jazz pianist Horace Silver and then Aquatint, a very modern contemporary choral work by Australian composer Oliver Cameron.

A jazz setting of the blues classic Careless Love from Thoms and the trio, with doo-wop vocals from the female choristers, and lengthy but tasty solos (appropriately applauded in true jazz club fashion) and a Hungarian folk/classical setting of a medieval hymn to the Virgin Mary rounded out the first section.

The second and third sections of the concert continued in the same manner. Some works were more interesting than others and the connection to an elegy was a little tenuous at times, but the variety of the material meant that interest was always maintained.

There was a high standard of performance all round and your reviewer was particularly impressed by the vocal work of Rachel Thoms and the trio. A full set from them in a jazz venue somewhere would be a delightful way to spend an evening.

A slight criticism might be a lack of theatricality in presentation. The male singers especially looked they had just wandered in from off the street and something like an all-black dress-code would better suggest an ensemble rather than an informal gathering of friends. The music certainly deserves a little extra effort.