Orchestra Victoria is swapping the concert hall for the Meat Market again, and oh how we love it!
Forget the usual concert hall, Orchestra Victoria is heading to the Meat Market for Session 2: Meet @ the Market, a night built entirely around energy, variety and personality.
Held in the Blackwood Box at the Meat Market, the program stitches together four wildly different works into one thrillingly varied evening, hosted on the night by Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe and conducted by Umberto Clerici.
Orchestra Victoria Session 2: Meet @ the Market
- Melbourne / Naarm
- Friday 4 September 2026, 7:00pm
- Blackwood Box, Meat Market
- Tickets here
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Stravinsky’s Danses Concertantes
The night opens with two movements from Stravinsky’s Danses Concertantes: Pas de deux and Marche-conclusion.
Written across 1941 and 1942 while Stravinsky was based in Los Angeles, the piece was commissioned by the Werner Janssen Orchestra and was originally intended purely for the concert stage, even though its title and character practically beg for movement.
It plays out like an abstract ballet, full of wit and vivid motion.
Across its five movements, bookended by a pair of playful marches, Stravinsky’s chamber orchestration pulses with kinetic energy: expect clipped, contrapuntal textures and instrumental voices that leap and swirl with real athleticism.
Nielsen’s Flute Concerto
Next up is the Allegretto from Carl Nielsen’s Flute Concerto, a piece that’s both charming and mischievous, giving the flute a rare and well-deserved star turn.
Nielsen wrote the concerto in 1926 for flautist Holger Gilbert-Jespersen, and it premiered in Paris to a warm reception. Structurally, it’s built on two contrasting movements that balance logic and clarity with genuine charm and vivacity.
Its broad, singing lyricism and scherzo-like playfulness make for a rich showcase for whoever’s performing it, and on this occasion that’s Orchestra Victoria’s own Lisa-Maree Amos, Section Principal Flute since 2007.
Amos brings serious international pedigree to the role, with performances alongside the BBC Symphony at the Proms and the Boston Symphony, plus seasons with The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. Her tone has been described as equal parts radiant and agile, which sounds like exactly what this sparkling, teasing concerto calls for.
Paul Stanhope’s Apollo
From there, the program shifts into more contemporary territory with Australian composer Paul Stanhope’s Apollo, written for wind octet and bongo.
The piece works as a double tribute: one part homage to the Apollo space missions, one part nod to Stravinsky’s own clear-lined musical style, particularly the restraint and order Stravinsky favoured over the emotional excess of the late-Romantic era.
It’s a neat bridge between old and new, and grounds the whole evening firmly in the present.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1
Closing out the night is the Adagio molto to Allegro con brio from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21, and there’s a great story behind it.
On 2 April 1800, a young and fairly ambitious Beethoven hired Vienna’s Imperial Court Theatre himself, presenting a program that included his Septet alongside works by Mozart and Haydn, essentially to announce to the city that he’d arrived.
The real centrepiece of that night was his First Symphony, a work so originally and confidently stated that it still makes the revolutionary leaps of his later symphonies feel almost inevitable.
It’s personal, playful, dramatic and dripping with self-belief: the spark of everything Beethoven would go on to become.
On the podium: Umberto Clerici
On the podium for the night is Umberto Clerici, a conductor known for his warmth, humour and fearless musicality, whose career spans both orchestral leadership and instrumental mastery.
Alongside his role as Chief Conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Clerici’s recent engagements include conducting Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Steven Isserlis for the Volksoper Vienna, plus debuts with Orchestra del Teatro Massimo in Palermo and Orchestra Regionale Toscana.
He’s also curated a three-week series with the Sydney Symphony and returned to the podiums of the Dunedin, Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras.
Your host for the night: Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe
Hosting the evening is Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe, a Rwandan-British composer, arts and culture strategist and broadcaster working between Naarm/Melbourne and Rwanda.
Her research-driven practice looks at how culture gets built and archived through lived experience, shaped by her formal training in composition and performance.
Multiple forms of synaesthesia, spanning sound, colour, texture and spatial sequence, add a neurodiverse layer to her multicultural identity, and her ongoing research into the global history of art music, which she’s been developing since 1999, feeds into her graphic scores, artworks and live musical conversation series, where audiences become active participants rather than passive listeners.
She also hosts Passenger, her weekly show on ABC Classic and the Listen app, taking listeners on an audio journey that pairs storytelling with art music from around the world, with a particular focus on non-Western voices.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Orchestra Victoria.
