Britain’s finest vocal consort closed their third Australian tour in Brisbane on Monday night — and the Concert Hall at QPAC was the right room for it.
Six singers. No instruments. No amplification. Just voices, and a program of choral music spanning five centuries that held a captivated audience in near-complete stillness.
The Ensemble
The Gesualdo Six are a British vocal consort comprising some of the UK’s finest singers, directed by Owain Park – bass, ensemble director, and an elegantly engaging presence throughout the evening. Formed in 2014, they have sung at the BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, and the Sydney Opera House. In Brisbane – their first-ever Queensland performance – they were: Park, countertenors Guy James and Alasdair Austin, tenors Joseph Wicks and Josh Cooter, and baritone Simon Grant.
Together they produced a sound that was both ancient and immediate — cleanly balanced, harmonically rich, and deeply expressive.
The Evening
Wishing Tree moved through five centuries of choral repertoire with the authority of an ensemble that has lived inside this music for years. William Byrd’s Elizabethan polyphony opened the programme, followed by new commissions, English folk song arrangements, and works by Josquin des Prez, Francis Poulenc, and Orlando Gibbons. The range — from Renaissance madrigals to Joby Talbot’s rhythmically angular The Wishing Tree to the folk warmth of The Oak and the Ash — was navigated with complete assurance at every turn.
The ensemble shifted in size as the programme unfolded, moving between full six-voice settings and smaller configurations, each bringing its own texture and intimacy. In the Concert Hall’s warm acoustics, every harmonic nuance, every shift in dynamic, every whispered phrase arrived with precision.
Park’s spoken introductions between works were as engaging as the music itself – erudite, warm, and gently funny. A tuning fork set the pitch before each piece began – a small, telling detail that spoke to the discipline and purity at the heart of what The Gesualdo Six do.
The applause at the close was rapturous and sustained.
The Verdict
Wishing Tree is the kind of recital that reminds you what the voice, unadorned, is capable of. The Gesualdo Six are at the peak of their craft — and Brisbane, at last, has heard them.
The Gesualdo Six performed Wishing Tree at QPAC Concert Hall, South Bank, on 29 June 2026. Photography by Andrew Wilkinson and Brit Creative.
