As Routley noted, by way of introduction to an apocryphal anecdote that Edwards later corrected, it was a concert of vignettes rather than of encyclopedic comprehensiveness.

Its carefully curated brackets nevertheless highlighted pervasive themes of Edwards' creative world – dance, chant, nature and its rhythms and rebirth through creative acts.

The unmetered rhythmic flexibility and spiritual expressiveness of chant was explored in Hildegard's O quam preciosa, Edwards' setting of the same words in Mountain Chant and Autumn Song by Peter Sculthorpe, an early influence and mentor. The next bracket, which like the first and the opening number was conducted by Sam Allchurch, pointed out a hidden affinity between some numbers of Edwards' Ab estatis foribus: Five Mediaeval Songs and the sprightly rhythms and phrase structures of Monteverdi's madrigal Zefiro torna.

Routley then took the conductor's podium for a movement from Ockeghem's Missa Mi-Mi and the carefully crafted polyphonic world of Clare Maclean's Christ the King which the choir sang with subtly nuanced refinement. Synergy percussion joined in the second half for Prelude and Dragonfly Dance followed by Paul Stanhope's intertextural exploration of death and mourning, Agnus Dei (Do not stand at my grave and weep).

Two specially commissioned world premieres followed. Olivia Swift's Dew set words by Sara Teasdale in a gentle and intuitive style that brought out natural rhythm and cadence, while Josephine Gibson's Let Them all Come set off the irony in a poem from First Dog On The Moon with a sacralising musical style.

Under Stanhope the choir captured textural smoothness and memorable simplicity of utterance in Agnus Dei from Edwards' Missa Alchera before closing the concert with the hypnotically complex trance-inducing rhythms of Edwards' Flower Songs I Estatico and a recapitulation of Dance Mantra to the words "Happy 75th birthday to Ross Edwards".