Katherine Potter has provided the programme note for Love, her commissioned work.

All other programme notes by Stephanie Nicholls for Mirabilis Collective.

Yandool (2011) by Kaleena Briggs and Nardi Simpson

Yandool—meaning We Come—opens the album Wind & Water by Stiff Gins, the acclaimed First Nations duo of Kaleena Briggs (Wiradjuri/Yorta Yorta) and Nardi Simpson (Yuwaalaraay). Sung in Wiradjuri, it is a welcoming song, a musical gesture of connection and shared presence.

For more than twenty-five years, Stiff Gins have brought together the power of friendship, family, and Country through their distinctive harmonies and storytelling. Their music blends folk, jazz, and contemporary song with the oral traditions of their communities, creating what one critic described as “songs that soar—joyful, rich, and full of memory.”

At the heart of their work lies the idea that music can be both personal and historical—a way of remembering elders and ancestors, and of carrying forward language and story. Through performance, they “sing the songs and the stories around the songs,” giving to lived experience, community, and shared history.

Yandool reflects this legacy. Its bright rhythm and layered voices carry warmth, pride, and generosity—an invitation to gather, listen, and celebrate. It embodies the spirit of Stiff Gins’ name: a reclamation of strength, dignity, and identity through sound.

The Stiff Gins album Crossroads was recently released and marks their 25-year milestone continuing their extraordinary legacy of storytelling through song.

Yandool

Performed with permission from Stiff Gins. Wiradjuri language words and guidance provided by Kaleena Briggs.

Yandal Ngiyanhi Babilgirri (We will sing) Yarra ngindugir ngiyahigin gunha (Tell you about us)

Yandal Ngiyanhi Babilgirri (We will sing)Ngiyanhi yanhanha Ngamurr mingaan (We come daughter, sister)

Ngiyanhi Bila mayiny (We are river people) Ngiyanhi Koori Murri mayiny (We are Koori murri people)

Yandal Ngiyanhi Babilgirri (We will sing) Yarra ngindugir ngiyahigin gunha (Tell you about us)

Yandal Ngiyanhi Babilgirri (We will sing) Bubiya gudhi bubiya gudhi ngadhi (Sing a song Sing a song for us)

Stiff Gins - Nardi Simpson (b. 1975) & Kaleena Briggs

Stiff Gins are one of Australia’s most celebrated First Nations vocal duos, founded by Kaleena Briggs and Nardi Simpson. For over twenty-five years, they have created music that bridges traditional storytelling and contemporary song, weaving together harmony, language, and lived experience.

Their name, originally reclaimed from a colonial slur, is a statement of strength and cultural pride — transforming a word of derision into one of empowerment. Through this act of reclamation, Stiff Gins have redefined the space for First Nations women’s voices in Australian music, celebrating resilience, joy, and self-determination.

With their soaring harmonies and deep sense of place, Briggs and Simpson have shaped a uniquely Australian sound that continues to inspire connection and belonging. Their songs honour Country, kinship, and the enduring stories that sustain community across generations.

Programme Notes and Artist Biographies

Galaa (2018) by Brenda Gifford, (arr. Jessica Wells; arr. for Mirabilis Collective by Julia Nicholls)

The title Galaa means “summer” in the Dhurga language of the Yuin people. It forms part of Brenda Gifford’s Music for the Dreaming suite — a collection of works exploring the six seasons on Yuin Country and the sounds of the land, sea, and sky.

Galaa captures the vibrancy and warmth of summer. Its rhythmic grooves and bright melodies radiate the energy of coastal life — the shimmer of heat, the movement of water, and the joyful rhythm of people gathering and celebrating together. Gifford’s writing is grounded in the natural world yet speaks in a universal language of vitality, connection, and renewal.

The work was first arranged for ensemble by composer Jessica Wells, and this new version for Mirabilis Collective by Julia Nicholls reimagines it for our instrumentation. It reflects the ensemble’s collaborative spirit and our commitment to performing works by First Nations composers, whose music is integral to the sound of our shared Australian identity.

In Galaa, the warmth of the season becomes a metaphor for generosity and connection — a reminder of how music can bring communities together to listen deeply and celebrate the land we share.

Brenda Gifford (b. 1968)

Brenda Gifford is a Yuin woman from Wreck Bay on the south coast of New South Wales, whose music is deeply rooted in Country, language, and community. A classically trained saxophonist and pianist, she first came to prominence as a member of the band Mixed Relations before establishing herself as one of Australia’s leading First Nations composers.

Her work draws on jazz, classical, and Indigenous musical traditions, blending contemporary sound worlds with Dhurga language and stories of the natural world. Gifford’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by major Australian ensembles, including the Australian Music Centre, the Sydney Opera House, and Ensemble Offspring.

A graduate of the Ngarra-Burria First Peoples Composers Program, Gifford served as First Nations Composer-in-Residence with Ensemble Offspring, creating works that weave together the cycles of the seasons with reflections on Country and belonging. Her music invites audiences to listen differently — to place, to time, and to each other.

“Where?” from The Rabbits (2015) by Kate Miller-Heidke

The hauntingly beautiful song “Where?” sits at the emotional heart of Kate Miller-Heidke’s opera The Rabbits, based on the celebrated picture book by John Marsden and Shaun Tan. The work reimagines the story of colonisation through allegory — the “rabbits” symbolising European settlers, and the “marsupials” representing the Indigenous custodians of the land.

In “Where?”, the characters find themselves in the aftermath of change, asking quietly: Where are we now? Where have we gone? Miller-Heidke’s music suspends time — its open harmonies, slow pulse, and wordless lament carrying a deep sense of loss and longing.

The song combines operatic stillness with the intimacy of contemporary song, giving voice to both grief and fragile hope. Within Southern Stars, it becomes a moment of reflection: a pause to listen to our shared history and the emotional landscape of belonging, displacement, and remembrance.

Where?

Now the land is bare and brown

And the wind blows empty 'cross the plains

I have walked these plains for the whole

Memory of my soul

And the soul of my mothers

And the soul of my father's fathers

We have been the life of these plains

Ghosts on these plains

The wind once full

The grass once green

There were plants in our hands

The time seems so long ago now

Where is the rich dark earth, brown and moist?

Where is the smell of rain dripping from gumtrees?

Everything familiar is gone

Everything I counted on

I can't run

I can't swim away from this land

Where is the rich dark earth, brown and moist?

Where is the smell of rain dripping from gumtrees?

Where are the billabongs?

The long-legged birds?

Where are the rivers?

They used to flow clear

Now they're eaten by mud

Who will save us

From the rabbits?

Kate Miller-Heidke (b. 1981)

Born in Gladstone, Queensland, Kate Miller-Heidke is one of Australia’s most distinctive musical voices. Classically trained at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, she holds a Master of Music in vocal performance and began her career in opera before establishing herself as a chart-topping singer-songwriter.

Miller-Heidke’s work transcends genre, seamlessly blending classical precision with pop immediacy and theatrical storytelling. She has released five studio albums, represented Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest (2019), and composed award-winning music for theatre and opera.

Her 2015 opera The Rabbits, co-created with librettist Lally Katz and composer Iain Grandage, won four Helpmann Awards, including Best New Australian Work and Best Original Score. Through her genre-defying artistry, Miller-Heidke continues to expand how we think about the voice and what it can express — from raw vulnerability to soaring lyricism.

Sati (2016, rev. 2023)

The title Sati comes from the Sanskrit word for “mindfulness,” a concept that forms the emotional and structural heart of the piece. Jessica Wells invites listeners into a space of quiet focus — a musical meditation on stillness and self-awareness.

The work begins in a state of poise and serenity, the melody unfolding with calm restraint. Gradually, agitation seeps in: fragments quicken, harmonies darken, and rhythmic tension grows. Wells describes this as the mind’s natural drift — the intrusion of memory or anxiety into our efforts to remain centred.

As the storm subsides, the music finds its way back to stillness. The return is not identical; it carries the memory of struggle, transforming peace into something deeper and more hard-won.

At once lyrical and contemplative, Sati reveals Wells’ gift for emotional storytelling through sound — a delicate balance of precision and vulnerability that captures the essence of mindfulness itself.

Jessica Wells (b. 1974)

Jessica Wells is an Australian composer, orchestrator, and arranger whose work bridges the worlds of concert music, theatre, and film. She studied composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and later completed a Master of Arts in Screen Composition at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

Her music has been performed by ensembles including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the Australian Ballet, as well as across television and cinema screens worldwide. Through her company Jigsaw Music, Wells has become one of Australia’s most sought-after orchestrators, contributing to major international films such as Elvis and Brahmāstra.

As a composer, Wells is known for her melodic clarity, emotional honesty, and ability to move seamlessly between genres. She is a passionate advocate for gender equity in the music industry, mentoring emerging composers and championing opportunities for women in composition and production.

Love (2025) by Katherine Potter

Love for soprano, flute, oboe, harp, violin, viola, and cello receives its world premiere tonight, performed by Lucinda Nicholls (soprano) Mirabilis Collective and guest artists Katherine Potter (viola) and Yi-Yun Loei (harp)

Commissioned by Mirabilis Collective with support from Creative Australia’s Boost Programme through the Australian Cultural Fund

The Music

Love is a setting of Caitlin Maling’s poem of the same name, and was commissioned by Mirabilis Collective to be premiered at this, the last concert of our Unveiled 2025 Concert Series. Drawn to the rich imagery in this poem about early motherhood, Potter created a musical rendering to evoke contrasts in tenderness and overwhelm, playfulness and exhaustion, and an interweaving of the past, present and future. Throughout the work, Potter uses the fifth mode of the ascending melodic minor scale— the ‘mixolydian flat 6th’—as a basis for melodic and harmonic material. This mode was chosen as, to the composer, it seems to imbue the music with both warmth and tension, perhaps redolent of the contrasts inherent in Maling’s poem. Love opens with the harp providing a gently rocking harmonic and rhythmic fabric over which the soprano voice tenderly observes her small child, with the bowed strings providing subtle, cosy support. A middle section explores vastness of feeling: the flute and oboe enter with sweeping gestures and the strings—bowed and plucked—create more strident and colourful figures. Potter makes heavy use of word painting in this middle section: the voice traces wider intervals when singing of Maling’s metaphorical large-scale imagery; accompanying figures in the violin and viola are displaced by one note to create a sense of blurriness; semitone glissandi in the voice, winds and strings follow the line 'you make my feet vibrate with tiredness’; cascades of harp arpeggios underscore ‘….stone cliffs with waves’. Music from the opening section returns at the end, where Maling returns to the up-close observations of her child - perhaps with their precious fragility sensed all the more.

The Poem

Love was written by Western Australian poet Caitlin Maling and appears in her 2023 collection Spore or Seed (Fremantle Press). The poem emerged, as Maling describes, “from the deep trenches of early parenting”—moments when her newborn son would drift to sleep in his pram long enough for her to write at her local café. The poem’s vivid images reflect those real fragments of time: the blur of exhaustion, the awe of new life, and the fleeting quiet between the two.

At its heart, Love explores the relationship between intimacy and vastness—how the intensity of caring for a child can feel infinite, yet in the grand scale of things, remains just a “speck.” Maling plays with different scales of time and space, comparing love itself to geological forces like the ocean: slow, immense, and deeply elemental.

When speaking about this musical collaboration, Maling admits she is “tone deaf” and “eager to hear how someone else has imagined my poetry into musical form.” Yet her fascination with the roots of poetry—in music, dance, and shared ritual—suggests a natural kinship between the two art forms.

She writes, “Poetry and music have shared similar evolutions towards intimacy and vulnerability. They are alike in their malleability and in the many purposes they can serve.”

In Love, Maling invites listeners to find their own space within the music — to pause, breathe, and recognise themselves in its ebb and flow. “Often a poem, when read aloud, is a short temporal experience,” she says. “The transition into musical form gives the audience breathing room to insert themselves into the words and the music.”

Love

Caitlin Maling, from Spore or Seed (2023) Reproduced with permission from Fremantle Press

You have ten fingers,

ten toes, a cry I can pick

from the wind over a building site.

You have eyes greedy

with life, when I try to feed you,

you grab the spoon, the sickness

in all babies is being a baby.

Seconds after being built,

closer to falling apart.

You make me doubt every way

I loved, you make my feet

vibrate with tiredness,

I’m on an overpass

with trucks thundering under

or on stone cliffs with waves

that mean nothing and dissolve

wholly into sound

only to come again, relentless

there is no end, only the edges

of loss that mark each calendar day

with a bright smile, firsts,

as you wobble slightly closer

to the edge of my life.

Katherine Potter (b. 1980)

Katherine Potter is a freelance violist and composer with an interesting musical background, having completed Bachelors of Music in both jazz performance (WA Academy of Performing Arts) and classical performance (with first-class honours; University of Western Australia). Katherine was a 2006 Australian Chamber Orchestra Emerging Artist, perfomed as a regular casual violist with the WA Symphony Orchestra between 2007-2021, and on occasion plays as Principal Violist with the Perth Symphony Orchestra. Katherine has also performed with the acclaimed Sartory String Quartet since their inception in 2013.

Katherine has composed concert, film and dance music which has been performed in Australia, the US and Canada, and has a predilection for writing new soundtracks for 1920s silent films for the ensemble Viola Dana. Soundtracks for this ensemble have included those for Buster Keaton's The General and Sherlock, Jr, and together with Viola Dana's drummer Pete Guazzelli, a co-composed soundtrack for Murnau's Nosferatu. Katherine has been a recipient of two DLGSC Development Grants and an Australia Council (now Creative Australia) Artstart grant for activities combining both her performance and composition practices.

Katherine was commissioned by the ABC to compose a suite of eight nocturnes for viola and piano, and to record these with Adam Pinto in early 2024. Eight Nocturnes was released digitally on the ABC Classic label in September 2024. One nocturne, entitled Here We Are, was chosen for the Seventh Grade AMEB Viola Manual List. Other recent commissioned projects include Respired for solo piano, commissioned by Adam Pinto; Just Maybe for marimba-vibraphone solo, commissioned by Paul Tanner; arranging Rachael Dease's Hymns for End Times alongside Alice Humphries and Mia Brine for the 2021 Perth Festival, performed by the WA Symphony Orchestra and Voyces; Reaching Out for String Quartet, commissioned by the Western Australian Young Artists Chamber Music Program; and Space Junk for guitar and vibraphone, commissioned by Jonathan Fitzgerald and Paul Tanner.

October in the Chair by Melody Eötvös

Composed in 2017 for flute, oboe, harp, violin, viola and cello, October in the Chair by Melody Eötvös draws its inspiration from Neil Gaiman’s short story of the same name. The tale imagines the twelve months of the year as people gathered around a campfire, swapping stories. When it’s October’s turn to speak, he tells of a lonely child — “the Runt” — who runs away from home, meets a ghost in a graveyard, and chooses to stay in that otherworldly companionship rather than return to cruelty.

Eötvös describes the work as a parallel to the story’s “whimsical yet dark undertones.” Much of the music focuses on the playful, animated conversations among the months — bright, characterful textures that evoke warmth, flickering light, and humour. At its centre, the tone shifts: the music becomes sparse and introspective, a “serious section” reflecting the Runt’s tragic choice, before the momentum and chatter of the ensemble return.

The writing is vivid and cinematic. Eötvös uses instrumental colour to create a sense of storytelling — flute and oboe as flickers of speech, harp glissandi like firelight, strings shifting between tenderness and unease. Beneath this surface playfulness lies a deeper reflection on empathy, mortality, and the need for kindness.

Interestingly, Eötvös composed the piece not long after the birth of her son. She notes that her days were filled with lullabies and “classic” baby music — influences that unexpectedly found their way into the score. “I was unaware of how much I’d absorbed of those pretty little tunes,” she writes, “but it revealed my susceptibility to what I listen to.” That thread of gentle lyricism softens the shadows of the story, leaving the listener with a sense of compassion and light.

October in the Chair was written for Inventi Ensemble and premiered at the Melbourne Recital Centre in July 2017. It has since become one of Eötvös’s most performed chamber works, prized for its combination of clarity, fantasy, and finely balanced ensemble writing.

Melody Eötvös (b. 1984)

Melody Eötvös is an award-winning Australian composer whose work spans orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electronic forms. Born in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, she studied composition at the Queensland Conservatorium and completed postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London before earning her Doctor of Music in Composition from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with Claude Baker and David Dzubay and undertook minors in music theory and electronic music.

Now based in Melbourne, Eötvös is celebrated for her vividly imaginative and texturally rich writing. Her works often draw inspiration from literature, myth, and nature, exploring the intersection between storytelling and sound. She has received numerous commissions from major ensembles across Australia and internationally, including the Australian String Quartet, Ensemble Offspring, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

On Thursday 6 November 2025, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of her new work The Brahminy Kite in her presence. Named after the bird of prey revered in many mythologies, the piece for full orchestra captures ideas of courage, freedom, and transcendence. Its opening rhythmic motif establishes a pulsing, ever-present energy that propels the work forward — a musical embodiment of flight and perseverance. Even in its lyrical passages, a sense of momentum carries through, culminating as the rhythmic cell from the opening returns at the close.

Eötvös’s music is known for its balance of imagination and craft, for drawing listeners into sound worlds that are both evocative and precise. Whether inspired by birds, books, or human emotion, her work invites us to listen with curiosity — to stories told not in words, but in the language of resonance and colour.

Caitlin Maling (b. 1985)

Caitlin Maling is a Western Australian poet whose work explores landscape, time, and the intimate rhythms of daily life. Raised in Fremantle, she has since lived and studied across Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, experiences that bring both local grounding and global perspective to her writing.

Maling holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Criminology from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Philosophy in Criminological Research from the University of Cambridge, and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Houston. She is the author of four poetry collections with Fremantle Press — Conversations I’ve Never Had (2015), Border Crossing (2017), Fish Song (2019), and Spore or Seed (2023). Her work has been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Dame Mary Gilmore Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and she is the recipient of the Val Vallis Award.

Her most recent collection, Spore or Seed, reflects on early motherhood, the body, and the passage of time — finding poetry in moments of fatigue, wonder, and renewal. In an interview with Fremantle Press, Maling describes writing the collection “in snatched moments, when the baby slept,” capturing both the immediacy and the introspection of new parenthood. (Read more here.)

Now based in Fremantle with her young family, Maling teaches creative writing at Curtin University. Her poetry is rooted in the everyday — the pauses between sleepless nights, the sweep of sand and sea — yet always attentive to larger questions of love, time, and transformation.

The Offering, Movements II & III (2015) by Elena Kats-Chernin

Elena Kats-Chernin’s The Offering was commissioned by the Flinders Quartet in 2015, written for piano and string quartet. The title hints at both the act of giving and the deep artistic exchange between composer and performers—a gesture of generosity that lies at the heart of chamber music itself.

Across its five movements, The Offering moves between exuberance and reflection, playful energy and quiet introspection. Tonight, Mirabilis Collective performs Movements II and III, which reveal contrasting sides of Kats-Chernin’s musical character.

The second movement (Andante) is lyrical and contemplative, a moment of tenderness built on long, singing lines and delicate interplay between the strings and piano. Its calm surfaces conceal a sense of yearning, as if the music is searching for connection.

By contrast, the third movement (Vivace scherzo) bursts into rhythmic vitality and witty dialogue. Kats-Chernin’s trademark rhythmic drive and playful syncopations infuse the ensemble with a sense of momentum—music that dances, sparkles, and smiles.

In these paired movements, listeners can sense both the intimacy and the optimism that characterise her music. The Offering invites us to experience generosity—not only as a musical act, but as a reflection of the shared spirit between performers, composers, and audiences.

Elena Kats-Chernin AO (b. 1957)

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in 1957, Elena Kats-Chernin is one of Australia’s most celebrated and widely performed composers. After early studies at the Gnessin State Musical College in Moscow, she emigrated to Australia in 1975 and completed her composition degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music before postgraduate study in Germany with Helmut Lachenmann.

Her vibrant and eclectic style—marked by rhythmic energy, lyrical warmth, and a vivid sense of colour—has made her music beloved by audiences worldwide. Kats-Chernin’s works range from operas and ballets to concertos, chamber music, and film scores. Her Eliza’s Aria became internationally recognised after being featured in the Lloyds TSB advertisements and at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2019 for distinguished service to the performing arts, Kats-Chernin continues to shape Australia’s musical voice through her uniquely spirited and generous compositions.

Making It Through (2023) by Angie McMahon, arr. Julia Nicholls

Originally written and recorded by Melbourne singer-songwriter Angie McMahon, Making It Through appears on her 2023 album Light, Dark, Light Again. The song reflects themes of endurance, self-compassion, and quiet strength — capturing the act of persevering through uncertainty with honesty and grace.

For Southern Stars, Julia Nicholls has created a new chamber arrangement for soprano and ensemble. Her version retains the song’s intimate core while expanding its harmonic and textural palette, transforming McMahon’s guitar-based original into a rich, acoustic sound world for voice, strings, piano, and winds.

This arrangement highlights McMahon’s gift for lyrical storytelling and the expressive possibilities of contemporary Australian song in a classical context. Making It Through bridges the worlds of pop and chamber music, affirming the shared human experience that connects them both.

Angie McMahon (b. 1994)

Angie McMahon is a Melbourne-based singer-songwriter whose music has become a defining voice of contemporary Australian storytelling. Born in 1994, she began performing as a teenager, developing a sound that combines lyrical honesty with emotional power.

Her debut album, Salt (2019), introduced audiences to her raw yet tender songwriting and earned widespread acclaim, debuting at number 5 on the ARIA Charts. In 2023, she released her second album, Light, Dark, Light Again — a collection of songs about renewal, courage, and self-compassion.

McMahon’s songs are rooted in authenticity. Her voice — both literal and lyrical — balances strength and vulnerability, inviting listeners into moments of reflection, uncertainty, and hope. Blending elements of folk, rock, and soul, her work resonates for its emotional directness and humanity, reminding us that music can be a quiet act of survival as much as expression.

Making It Through

Morning I woke up with the view of the moon
To untangle my shoulders
A sleepy balloon I'm celebrating
Making it through
Just making it through
And when I grow up
I wanna be like a tree
And change with the seasons
Helping people breathe but
All I've achieved lately is making it through
Just making it through

I froze on the side where you left me
To hold everything still worth protecting
I know now at the end of the ending
That just making it through is the lesson
Just making it through

I didn't know then
That out of ash and destruction
The ground will grow things
I was trying so hard to stay still, terrified that I killed something

I froze like the whole world was ending
Exposed hole in my own panic pretending
And I know now that we needed that ending
You were never gonna stay
And just making it through is okay

Time is supposed to run out, time is supposed to
Sun is supposed to go down, sun is supposed to
Like your mood, like your power, like your battery
Rise, fall, rise, life, death, life again
Sky, ground, sky, day, night, day again
Rise, fall, rise, life, death, life again
Sky, ground, sky

Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again
Light, dark, light again, light, dark, light again

O Vertigo! (2014) by Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall

O Vertigo! is the title track from Kate Miller-Heidke’s fourth studio album, released in March 2014. Co-written with her long-time collaborator Keir Nuttall, it marked her first independent release following her departure from Sony Music, produced through a successful fan-funded campaign with PledgeMusic. The project went on to debut at number 4 on the ARIA Albums Chart, establishing Miller-Heidke as one of Australia’s most distinctive independent artists.

The song itself is a celebration of freedom and risk. Blending driving rhythmic momentum with soaring vocal lines, Oh! Vertigo! explores the exhilaration and uncertainty of standing at the edge—both musically and metaphorically. Its title plays on the dual meaning of vertigo: the dizzying fear of falling, and the thrill of letting go.

Miller-Heidke’s background in classical voice training and her flair for theatrical expression infuse the song with unique character. Shifting effortlessly between pop immediacy and operatic power, she creates a sound world that is bold, dynamic, and unmistakably her own.

First performed live at her O Vertigo! tour in 2014 and later featured in her celebrated Kate Miller-Heidke Live at The Sydney Opera House album (2016), the work remains one of her signature pieces—a fearless fusion of technical brilliance, pop energy, and emotional release.

O Vertigo!

Oh, vertigo!
I don’t want you to leave me
I don’t want you to go

Oh, bless my soul!
I would fall for the mountains
I would fall for the snow

Yes, I am ill
Yes, I cannot get my balance
Yes, I get carried away
In a breeze
Like a feather
It doesn’t matter
Let it go

Give me love
Give me vertigo
Vertigo

I just wanted to let you know

Oh, in the the echo
Your hands were like magic
Your hands were like gold

Oh, vertigo
I believe
I believe
I believe
You know

Yes, I am ill
Yes, I cannot get my balance
Yes, I get carried away
In a breeze
Like a feather
It doesn’t matter
Let it go

Give me love
Give me vertigo

Yes, I’m a mess
Yes, I am covered in bruises
Yes, I get carried away
I’m sorry if
It confuses
It doesn’t matter
Let it go

Give me love
Give me vertigo
Vertigo