Composer Elena Kats-Chernin AO and ARIA award-winning pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska open their Ancient Letters tour at Bellingen Memorial Hall on Wednesday 21 October, weeks after the album was nominated for Best Classical Album at the 2026 ARIA Awards.
It is four hands at one piano, every note of it Elena’s music, from two musicians who have played together since 1995.
Nominated for a 2026 ARIA
Ancient Letters went to no.1 on the ARIA Classical charts, was Limelight’s Editor’s Choice in December 2025, and is now up for Best Classical Album. This is the chance to hear music from it live, before the winner is announced in November.
On the program
They will play a couple of pieces from Ancient Letters in their four-hands format, alongside other works from Elena’s catalogue.
Never the same concert twice
A work written for full orchestra can run to eighty pages of score. What sits on the stand in front of these two is a few sheets of sketches. From those they rebuild the piece live, Tamara playing the outline while Elena elaborates over the top, so the version Bellingen hears will only ever exist on that night.
Who’s playing
You will know some of Elena’s music already. She wrote Eliza Aria, the piece Lloyds TSB took around the world, Russian Rag from the film Mary and Max, and the score for Adam Elliot’s Oscar-nominated Memoir of a Snail. Her music featured at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and she was the highest-voted Australian composer in the ABC’s Classic 100 in both 2024 and 2025.
Tamara gave her first public performance at the age of two, playing Bartók. She won the ARIA for Best Classical Album in 2015, has recorded eleven number one albums, draws four million streams a year on Spotify and presents the weekly program Duet on ABC Classic.
The tour
Music in the Regions, a not-for-profit touring organisation that has arranged more than 100 concerts in regional communities, presents the tour. The Coffs Harbour Music Society is helping spread the word locally. Bellingen is the first of four stops, with the tour continuing to Port Macquarie on 22 October, Taree on 24 October and Maitland on 25 October.
Bellingen Memorial Hall, 32 Hyde Street. Wednesday 21 October, doors 6.30pm for a 7pm start. General admission $35, under 18s free.
Book Bellingen tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/ancient-letters-elena-kats-chernin-and-tamara-anna-cislowska-bellingen
Official website: https://www.musicintheregions.com/ancientletters
Teaser video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwAwjfOcKAY
