Experience EXQUISITE HARMONIES in Sydney on 15 August 2026, where baroque music returns through viola da gamba and harpsichord.
There are evenings in Sydney when the harbour seems to quieten without becoming silent.
By August, winter settles lightly over the city. The light disappears earlier, conversations move indoors, and music begins to feel less like background and more like destination. Along Walsh Bay, where old maritime structures now house rehearsal rooms and performance spaces, audiences gather with a different kind of expectation – not for volume or spectacle, but for attention.
This August, one of those evenings will unfold inside the Choir Rehearsal Room at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct.
The Marais Project will launch EXQUISITE HARMONIES, a new album and concert programme built around music for viola da gamba and harpsichord – two instruments whose voices once filled European courts before slipping almost entirely from public performance.
For a single evening, those sounds will return.
Not as historical reconstruction, but as living music carried into contemporary Sydney.
Entering the World of EXQUISITE HARMONIES
There is something distinctive about hearing early music performed live.
Its textures behave differently from modern orchestral sound. Notes seem to breathe rather than expand. Silence becomes part of the composition. Instruments speak with intimacy rather than projection.
That atmosphere will shape EXQUISITE HARMONIES.
Led by viola da gamba player Jennifer Eriksson, alongside harpsichordist Anthony Abouhamad and violinist and vocalist Susie Bishop, the performance will gather musicians whose long collaboration has evolved through years of shared practice and curiosity.
The venue itself will support that closeness.
The Choir Rehearsal Room at Walsh Bay offers a scale that allows audiences to hear details often lost in larger concert spaces: the grain of bow against string, the resonance of plucked notes, the shifting space between melody and accompaniment.
This is music that invites listening rather than demanding it.
EXQUISITE HARMONIES and the Return of Forgotten Sound
Unlike instruments that remained visible through centuries of orchestral evolution, the viola da gamba and harpsichord largely disappeared from regular performance by the late eighteenth century.
Their return in the twentieth century was less revival than rediscovery.
That rediscovery sits quietly beneath EXQUISITE HARMONIES.
Jennifer Eriksson’s connection to the viola da gamba began unexpectedly while studying cello in Sydney. Hearing the instrument performed live altered her path and eventually became the foundation of The Marais Project.
Anthony Abouhamad followed a similarly indirect route, beginning with piano before becoming drawn toward historical keyboards and later building a career through performance, study and teaching.
Their shared musical history gives the programme a sense of continuity.
Rather than approaching baroque repertoire as museum material, the concert suggests something more immediate – music carried forward through relationships and repeated encounters.
Music Across Centuries
The programme for EXQUISITE HARMONIES will move across composers whose work remains connected through influence, experimentation and changing ideas of musical expression.
Suites and sonatas by Georg Philipp Telemann and Carl Friedrich Abel will place the viola da gamba at the centre of the evening.
Alongside these works, Eriksson has assembled a broader suite of French baroque music shaped by composers whose artistic lives intersected.
Among them is Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, remembered for expanding the possibilities of the viola da gamba through the addition of a seventh string. His influence reached Marin Marais, whose expressive playing became central to French court music.
Nearby in history stands Antoine Forqueray, whose virtuosity became legendary enough to invite comparison.
One contemporary writer observed that Marais played like an angel, while Forqueray played like the devil.
Those contrasts remain audible centuries later.
Abouhamad will also perform solo harpsichord works and offer an improvised fantasia in the style of Telemann – an approach that reminds audiences that baroque music was once less fixed than modern concert culture often suggests.
EXQUISITE HARMONIES and New Conversations
The final moments of the album introduce another perspective entirely.
The Acceptance, written by Biripi and Gamillaroi composer Troy Russell, extends the programme beyond European traditions and toward reflection on place and continuity.
Performed with additional contributions from Tommie Andersson and Susie Bishop, the piece functions as a musical acknowledgement of country.
Its presence broadens the conversation opened by EXQUISITE HARMONIES.
Rather than presenting historical music as isolated from contemporary Australia, it recognises that artistic histories overlap and coexist.
The result is not contrast for its own sake.
It becomes an invitation to hear older forms differently.
After the Last Note
When audiences leave Walsh Bay and return to the harbour edge, winter air will feel sharper again.
The city will continue in familiar ways.
But performances like EXQUISITE HARMONIES often linger quietly.
A phrase returns unexpectedly.
A timbre stays in memory.
An instrument once unfamiliar becomes impossible to forget.
That may be the lasting impression of the evening.
Not simply hearing music from another era.
But recognising how sound continues travelling – through people, through places, and through the unexpected moments when history becomes present again.
Event Details
Event: EXQUISITE HARMONIES – Album Launch Concert
Presented By: The Marais Project
Date: Saturday 15 August 2026
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: Choir Rehearsal Room, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct – Wharf 4/5, 15 Hickson Road, Dawes Point NSW
Featuring:
Jennifer Eriksson – Viola da Gamba
Anthony Abouhamad – Harpsichord
Susie Bishop – Violin & Voice
Album Release:
Singles released 15 and 29 July 2026
Full album available from 7 August 2026
Tickets and Album Information: www.maraisproject.com.au