In 2012, shortly after returning to Australia after living in the UK, Matthew Manchester was booked to play cornetto in the popular Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's Noel Noel series. During this series he met and performed alongside eminent saxophonist Christina Leonard. The following year they were joined by soprano Anna Sandstrom.


They were both excited at the audience response, and the blend of sounds when these two instruments, separated by almost 400 years of history, were brought together. There were times that it was impossible to tell the difference between the two sounds.
Since that time we have worked to create a project where audiences can hear both old and new music performed on this combination of instruments. Utilising Camerata Antica, and the stunning voice of Anna Sandstrom, this dream is finally becoming a reality. We have commissioned new Australian works by rising star of the Australian composition scene, Alice Chance, and one of the most talented and prolific composers alive today, Elena Kats-Chernin.

Both compositions utilise the sound combination of cornetto & soprano saxophone, along with voice, viola da gamba, and harpsichord. Alice's work is a stunningly haunting setting of the Keats poem 'Ode on Melancholy'.  Elena's work is a beautiful waltz, reminiscent of a palm court orchestra.

The name for this project; '...the very temple of Delight' is taken from a line in Keats' Ode on Melancholy.

We will be holding a free concert at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Recital Hall West, on Saturday 13th June, at 6:30pm to premiere these works, and perform C17th Century music for voice and two soprano instruments (in this case cornetto and soprano saxophone). We would like to invite all of our supporters to attend this concert and hear these fantastic new works for the first time, alongside older masterpieces, never before heard with this combination of instruments.

All of the funds will be used to help defray the costs of rehearsing, performing, and most importantly, recording these two new works. 
To get this project off the ground, the core members of Camerata Antica will not be taking a fee for this concert. However, we still need to pay for the time of our other musicians, the cost of the commissions themselves, and the recording costs.

The recordings will be used to help promote this project, and hopefully allow us to perform these new works to a wider audience, including festivals and concert series.

Of the money collected, the first $1900 will go towards the cost of commissioning these works.
The next $600 will go towards recording and production costs.

Any extra funds collected will help pay for the musicians, and allow us to record more of the C17th repertoire we will be featuring in our concert on 13th June 2015. To our knowledge this will be the first time C17th repertoire will have been recorded with cornetto and soprano saxophone playing together. 

Please pledge if you can. All donations, large or small, are gratefully received and help us to get this project off the ground. 

The biggest obstacle to this project is financial. it is very expensive to get 5 professional musicians together to rehearse and perform a program. it is also expensive to commission composers to write for us. This campaign is an experiment to see if our very supportive audience and fan base will take to this new funding model as a way to finance new art, rather than the old model of reliance upon ticket sales to fund larger projects.

We will definitely perform these works, regardless of the outcome of the campaign, but we need financial support to ensure that they are recorded for posterity, and hopefully performed again in the near future. Without financial support this project will financially limit the number of projects Camerata Antica will be able to put on in the next year. With financial support, we hope to use the recordings to interest festivals and other concert venues to hear these wonderful works in the very near future.