Our 2026 Commissions
In 2026, the Coriole Music Festival is excited to be commissioning a new work from Australian composer Belinda Gehlert titled Stellar, and work once again with our much loved Anne Cawrse for a resetting of This Too Shall Pass. See below for more details about these fantastic works.
To support the activities of the Coriole Music Festival, you can donate online via credit card through either the Coriole Music Festival website, or the McLaren Vale Music Festival Association website. Donations are used to build a sustainable corpus of funds for our Association, ensure ticket prices are kept equitable, and engaging with composers for new commissions whenever we can.
If you prefer to donate via EFT, you can do so via the following bank details:
BSB: 015-208
Account Number: 423415136
Account name: McLaren Vale Music Festival Association Public Fund
Once you have made a donation via EFT, please email accounts@mvmf.asn.au with the details, and we will issue you a tax deductible receipt.
Donations $2 and over are tax deductible. For any questions, please contact either the Chair – Mark de Raad – or the Treasurer – Kimberly Philp.
Anne Cawrse
Photo by Sam and Ben at Headshot Laboratory
This Too Shall Pass
New arrangement for String Quartet, commissioned by Coriole Music Festival for their 2026 program.
In Anne’s words:
“This Too Shall Pass is one of my earliest song cycles. Composed in 2009 for Soprano Greta Bradman and Pianist Leigh Harrold, it comprises of four songs setting texts by D.H. Lawrence, Goethe, Chidiock Tichborne and Emily Dickinson. The texts all elegiac in character; the first three are even titled ‘Elegy’ in their original forms, and the Dickinson with its opening line I shall know why – when Time is over finds the protagonist wrestling with faith, suffering, and the promise of redemption. These were always intended to be ‘big’ songs- meaty, full of drama and tenderness and important reflections.
I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity by Kate and the Coriole Music Festival to re-imagine these pieces for String Quartet and Soprano. I have another song cycle, A Woman’s Song, written at a similar time that was composed originally for String Quartet and Soprano and love the ensemble. The way I think about the construction of a piece changes depending on the instruments I’m writing for, so A Woman’s Song is quite different from This Too Shall Pass. But now I get to go back to the piano score and work out how to effectively and sensitively convey the same musical message with this new instrumental combination.
The broadening of the musical palette to strings provides both many questions to answer (how to replicate the ample sustain pedal used in most of my piano writing, for example) but also opportunities to re-explore the music. Once you start digging, it’s amazing what you find -hidden lines, special harmonic moments, textural possibilities, all of which can now be illuminated in a different way with this fresh instrumentation. And on top of all that, I get to dive into a back-catalogue piece that I’ve always had a special fondness for, and spend some time playing, listening, and learning. It’s surprising what you can learn from the younger version of yourself!
It’s a thrill to have the incredible Desiree Frahn sing these songs for the first time, together with the wonderful quartet of musicians Kate has gathered together. I can’t wait to hear the end product, and to share these songs with the warm and always-generous Coriole audience for the first time.”
About Anne
Anne Cawrse is an award-winning Australian composer of acoustic solo, chamber, orchestral and vocal works.
Cawrse’s music blends soaring, lyrical melodies, dexterous rhythmic interplay and an unpredictably colourful harmonic palette. She is particularly fond of discovering the expressive musical potential hidden within the words of female writers.
Growing up in the small rural town of Freeling in South Australia, Cawrse moved to Adelaide to pursue studies in composition at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. In 2008 she completed her PhD in Composition under the supervision of Graeme Koehne and Charles Bodman Rae. Cawrse’s penchant for text setting has made her the most commissioned composer of the award-winning Adelaide Chamber Singers (six commissions since 2005) and a highly revered art song composer, with notable performances and recordings by Greta Bradman, Lorina Gore, Emma Horwood, Kyle Stegall, Robert Macfarlane, Kate Macfarlane, Cheryl Pickering and Bethany Hill.
Cawrse is highly sought after as an orchestral and chamber music composer, with major commissions from the Adelaide and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, the Australian String Quartet, Plexus Ensemble, the Adelaide Wind Orchestra, the Benaud Trio and the Zephyr Quartet. Her first opera, Innocence, was developed with Singular Productions and the State Opera Company of South Australia with support from an Arts SA Major Commission grant. Suite from Innocence was premiered in June 2021 by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at ‘She Speaks’, a mini-festival curated by Cawrse which celebrated the lives and music of female composers today and throughout history. ‘She Speaks’ returned to the Elder Hall stage in both 2022 and 2024.
Belinda Gehlert
Photo supplied
Stellar
In Belinda’s words:
“I am excited to be composing a new string quartet, Stellar for the 2026 Coriole Music Festival and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to bring this work into the world with the support of the Coriole community.
Stellar is a string quartet in four movements that traces the life cycle of a star, from its fragile beginnings, brilliant existence, violent end, and the quiet mystery that follows. The piece mirrors these cosmic stages while inviting the audience to reflect on time, memory, and change.
Structured in four movements; Nebula (Birth), Main Sequence (Life), Supernova (Death), and Afterlife (Rebirth), the work will explores the vastness of the universe through rich harmonies, shifting colours, and evolving textures. It begins with shimmering, breath-like gestures in Nebula, evoking dust gathering in the dark and the first hints of something coming into being. Main Sequence will feature driving rhythms, and forward momentum. Supernova then fractures into chaos, rupture, and release before resolving into Afterlife, a space of stillness, resonance, and quiet possibility.
This piece is emerging from a year of enormous personal upheaval and transformation, a time when life feels both expansive and fragile, when everything familiar seems to be breaking apart so that something truer can take shape. Standing in this liminal space, on the edge of endings and beginnings, the life cycle of a star feels like the perfect metaphor: creation, brilliance, collapse, and the unexpected beauty of what comes after.
Stellar is both a cosmic journey and an inward one, a meditation on becoming, on holding yourself together through the cracking, and on finding possibility in the light that is beginning to emerge. And after the final note fades, I hope we can all step outside together and look up to see what the stars have to say.”
About Belinda
Belinda Gehlert is an accomplished composer, violinist, and violist whose professional creative practice spans more than two decades. Since 2005, she has composed chamber music, orchestral works, and incidental music for stage and screen.
A founding member and first violinist of the award winning Zephyr Quartet, Belinda was integral to the ensemble’s artistic direction and creative output for 15 years. With Zephyr, she performed across Australia and internationally in the Philippines, England, Ireland, Germany, Scotland, and The Netherlands.
Belinda has composed and arranged music for leading Australian ensembles and companies including the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Brink Productions, Patch Theatre Company, The Firm New Music , State Theatre company of South Australia and Restless Dance Theatre. In 2020, she was Composer in Residence with COMA (Creative Original Music Adelaide).
In 2024, she composed a new work for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra as part of the She Speaksfestival, which she co-curated with fellow composer Anne Cawrse. That same year, she received a prestigious ABC Classic commission to write a ten minute work for baroque ensemble based on a poem by feminist poet Adrienne Rich about astronomer Caroline Herschel. The work was performed by Adelaide Baroque and recorded for release in August 2025.
Earlier commissions include a 2022 work for string quartet, inspired by visual artworks exhibited at MOD gallery, commissioned by Chamber Music Adelaide.
Alongside her compositional work, Belinda maintains a vibrant career as a freelance performer. She is a regular violinist and violist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and Queensland Symphony Orchestra, and is active in chamber ensembles, theatre productions, and world music collaborations.
I acknowledge that I live and work on Kaurna land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.