Oliver Mann, Bass

Bass baritone Oliver Mann has forged a singular path amidst the Australian music landscape. His experience and prolificacy within the early music and Baroque movements – especially in the repertoire of J.S. Bach – speaks for itself. He has performed BWV 211: Coffee Cantata (Schlendrian) with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, BWV 201: The Dispute between Phoebus und Pan (Pan) with the Victorian Opera, and, as bass soloist: Magnificat, St John Passion, St Matthew Passion and the Lutheran Masses.

But it is Mann’s sensitivity for interpretation and candour of performance – described as “engrossing” by Age critic Clive O’Connell – that has come to define his practice, and his commitment to the act of singing across a plethora of modes and contexts beyond the classical canon has genuinely set him apart. His output as a writer, composer and recording artist has yielded three widely celebrated solo albums – including Slow Bark (2013) and The Possum Wakes at Night (2009) through influential Australian Music label Preservation – and his keenness for traversing diverse musical languages has seen him hailed as a “singular musician…collapsing worlds to create something entirely new”. He has worked as a collaborator with respected experimental musician Mick Turner (Dirty Three) for the Melbourne and Sydney Arts Festivals, as a soloist in the first performances of Gurrumul’s Number one charting album Djarimirri and Oliver recently performed as a soloist in the Australian Premier of James Macmillan’s Since it was the Day of His Preparation as well as Arvo Pärt’s Passio,