Sacha Gibbs-McPhee
Clarinettist
Mostly French music for mostly woodwinds.
Witness Queensland's finest wind soloists in one chamber music performance this January.
The French Riviera is beautiful in Spring, but hold onto your hat! Noosa Chamber Music's 2026 season begins with woodwinds, and only woodwinds, in a concert featuring the best of French music.
The movements captured in Van Gogh's wheat fields were probably inspired by the Mistral. This "master" wind fascinated the ancients, from cavemen to the Celts, the Romans, and the artists and composers of the Belle Époque.
Only one wind could match the wonderful power of the Mistral, and it was blowing through woodwind instruments in the great conservatoires of France. In the golden age of world fairs, Art Nouveau, impressionism, marvelous new inventions, and Eiffel-Tower-building, French composers discovered that woodwind instruments were as capable as strings, and so much more.
Ravel's exquisite homage Le Tombeau de Couperin blends traditional polyphony with jazz-inspired harmony, and the various colours of the winds combine in a bouquet of refined elegance. Fauré and Ibert provide the soundtrack for a stroll down the Champs-Élysées, no violins required.