Chamber Music Adelaide invites expressions of interest from South Australian composers to create a new work celebrating the 10th anniversary of On the Terrace. This is a significant and celebratory commission marking a decade of bringing chamber music out of the concert hall and into the heart of Adelaide’s cultural life.
The new work will be the culminating performance of On the Terrace 2026, bringing together two chamber ensembles and an inclusive choir, Poco Tutti, in a shared musical celebration.
On the Terrace is Chamber Music Adelaide’s flagship annual free festival, held across the North Terrace cultural precinct in Adelaide. Now in its tenth year, the festival brings together professional chamber musicians and emerging artists for a day of free performances across multiple venues including the Art Gallery of South Australia and the State Library of South Australia, South Australian Museum and Migration Museum. Performed in intimate, open, and accessible settings, On the Terrace connects diverse audiences with chamber music in ways that surprise and delight.
In celebrating ten years of On the Terrace, the commission responds to the theme of gathering and reinvention: music that carries different histories and arrives at a moment of shared possibility.
The work is conceived in three parts, described here from the end point back:
The Finale: An 8–10 minute work for two chamber ensembles and inclusive choir, Poco Tutti, performed as the culminating concert of On the Terrace 2026. The two ensembles, having each performed their standalone piece earlier in the day now come together, with the choir providing the thread that binds them. The finale brings together the musical material of both standalone pieces, reincorporating and transforming it, whether woven simultaneously or reimagined as a mashup of both works. The approach is the composer’s choice.
Two Standalone Chamber Pieces: Each standalone piece is written for a separate ensemble – the same two ensembles who will reunite in the finale. Each piece is designed to be performed independently at different venues and times throughout On the Terrace. Since their material feeds into and is transformed by the finale, each standalone piece may be shorter in duration; the composer determines the appropriate length for each.
The two standalone pieces and the finale together form a single cohesive commission, with each part composed with the whole in mind.
This structure reflects the spirit of On the Terrace itself – distinct voices, distinct spaces, coming together in an intimate setting and reinvented as something new.
Full details can be found at https://www.chambermusicadelaide.com.au/programs/commissioning-program .
Expressions of interest close on June 23.
Photo credit: Ben Searcy
