A 55-minute uninterrupted concert experience is in development to accompany Dale Cornelius’s forthcoming album, What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind? The planned production will bring together live string quartet, keyboards and sample manipulation with spoken word, bespoke lighting and video projection. Conceived for festivals and curated concert series, it will expand the six-track recording into a continuous live presentation.
The performance is being designed with international adaptability in mind. It can incorporate local string quartets and language-specific spoken-word performers, allowing the work to be presented in different locations. The album itself, due in October 2026, features Eclective Strings, a Melbourne-based collective whose members include musicians from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Partridge String Quartet. Co-director Amy You has performed as a featured soloist on the Hans Zimmer Live world tour and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma.
At the centre of the project are stories drawn from Cornelius’s life. The title track incorporates the sound of a metal door moving in the wind, recorded during a late-night walk in Montalcino, Italy. ‘A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby)’ was written in 1999 while his premature son was in a life-threatening medical situation, but remained unrecorded for 26 years. The opening composition, ‘In This Moment, What Matters Most?’, takes its title from a phrase that helped Cornelius during a period of anxiety and caring for his mother.
While the live production remains in development, the approximately 31-minute album will offer its own immersive listening experience through Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio, alongside a stereo edition. Its quartet, synthesizers and found sounds bring together the project’s personal and place-based inspirations. The planned concert will carry those same foundations into a different format, adding spoken language and visual elements to Cornelius’s exploration of what people retain, release and carry forward.