Sunday 1^st December 2024

Oboist Stephanie Nicholls and flautist Tresna Stampalia led a group of vibrant young women in the joy of Christmas-themed music in this afternoon’s concert, with plenty of genre blending and harmonious melodies, all by women composers or songwriters.

I have not attended a Mirabilis Collective event prior to today, but I am familiar with most of the performers work in their participation in other Perth based ensembles (choirs, orchestras and chamber music groups), and I am eager to hear them together at last. There is much to love in this concert and ensemble, plenty of swoony melodies and heartfelt lyrics, beautiful little gems of songs that rightfully belong on your Christmas playlist, and reams of informative spiels about each composer featured.  

Nicholls and Stampalia are beautiful musicians, highly musical, their oboe and flute stylings are classy and stylish, and they are generous in their playing within ensembles and in support of their young vocalists, who are often miked. Ellen Wittkuhn’s cello is a lovely addition to the sound world, played with sensitivity and bringing welcome bass to a treble heavy mix.

The best vocal moments are the choral ones (showing off their fine chorister chops) —Elizabeth Poston’s The Apple Tree and Errollyn Wallen’s humorous Designer Christmas were stand-outs— and within the heartfelt contemporary ballads like Norah Jones’ It’s Only Christmas Once a Year and Vienna Teng’s My Guardian Angel sung by Lucinda and Julia Nicholls sweet young developing soprano voices respectively. Nicholls senior often also plays piano in this ensemble, and the majority of arrangements featured in this concert are unfussy, uncomplicated and minimal. Nicholls again is a generous supporting presence on keyboard, with musicality and grace.

The highlight of the show for me was a fantastic song written by Julia Nicholls; Christmas is Here. Get this professionally recorded at once Julia, and send it to ABC Classic Choir! It’s a banger.

There are some tweaks to programming that I believe would benefit the delivery in future. Today in all there are 14 items on the program, as most of these items are shortish at 3 minutes or so, having sometimes almost 2 minutes of narration in between every single item becomes wearisome. As lovely as Ali Bodycoat’s voice and presence is, it’s a little overused.  I really love program notes! Give me more! As many program notes as you want! And let me read them and any song lyrics whilst I enjoy and relish a good chunk of music. Also, placing similar genres together or presenting a larger selection from one composer (or composers of a similar era) I think increases the impact and enjoyment of this lovely music.

To end, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever attended a concert consisting of entirely woman composers! How fabulous. With a few tweaks to the presentation, I think this concert series has the potential to pack real punch. Well done, Mirabilis.