Sutherland, Tailleferre, Debussy and Henry in dialogue across time and Country.

Colours of Country opens the FQ 2027 season with composers who each pushed back against the labels put on them. Margaret Sutherland's String Quartet No.1, a landmark of Australian composition, sits twenty years on from Germaine Tailleferre's String Quartet, written by the only woman among Les Six, a name a critic invented for a group that was busy rebelling against the lush Romanticism of its predecessors.

Debussy belonged to no group comfortably either: he famously disliked the 'Impressionist' tag attached to his music, and his String Quartet in G minor bears it out, rhythmic and tough one moment, sublimely lyrical the next. Opening the program is the world premiere of a new work by James Henry, Kamilaroi-Yuwaalaraay, Yorta Yorta and Yuin composer and FQ's First Peoples Advisor, commissioned as the first instalment of Listen to the Land. These are four distinct voices, each unwilling to be reduced to a single story.