Few lyricists capture the minutiae of Australian life with such romanticism as The Whitlams.
By taking the everyday and turning it into tales whose themes linger past their temporal expression, The Whitlams are as essential to a listener's vocabulary as sunny skies are to Sundays.
Songs such as 'Blow Up The Pokies' and 'No Aphrodisiac' have dominated best of lists for decades, their sophisticated harmonic expressions mirroring the complex absurdities and beauties of life.
For musical tales such as these, there is one logical next step, one which artistic director Richard Tognetti saw in 2003, asking the timeless band to play with his Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Thus began a marriage of tradition and storytelling that had been foretold decades before in frontman Tim Freedman's childhood. "I love Nelson Riddle's arrangement of the 'Batman' theme," Freedman shares.
"I was known for dancing to that very enthusiastically at the age of three. My father listened to a lot of big band music – Glenn Miller and Archie Shepp. He took me to see the Daly-Wilson Big Band when I was a teenager.
"It's been a feature of my listening history. The first thing that really moved me was hearing the Australian Chamber Orchestra play Arvo Pärt's pieces."
Tognetti's vision for The Whitlams fortuitously arrived as Freedman's long-term friendship with eminent Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe began, and Freedman saw the evident path before him.
"It was Richard Tognetti's idea for The Whitlams to do a concert tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in 2003, about the same time I became friends with Peter Sculthorpe.
"It all appeared to me, and that's when I started experimenting with my compositions in a different format. The ACO was a quite restrained programme, just myself and our drummer Terepai with the orchestra.
"The following year, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra approached us and all the arrangements were expanded to the full orchestra. We realised it worked with the four-piece band, because we could match them for power."
Over the years, Australia's most experienced musical hands have touched different pieces from The Whitlams' songbook. Via Benjamin Northey, Brett Dean, Iain Grandage, Sean O'Boyle, Daniel Denholm, Jamie Messenger, Julie Symonds and, of course, Peter Sculthorpe, the compositions found new resting places, from Hitchcockian menace to sweet strings alongside all-pistons firing instrumental explosions.
"So Sculthorpe, Daniel Denholm, who produced 'Blow Up The Pokies' and 'Thank You For Loving Me At My Worst', and Sean O'Boyle composed pieces. As the years passed, for each orchestral tour, I'd commission two or three tracks from new albums to freshen the repertoire.
"Now, I have probably 32 full scores and I can choose 20 that suit the tour. This time, there are about seven songs from 'Eternal Nightcap' and the rest have been chosen for their flow and themes."
For their upcoming orchestral tour, The Whitlams recruited Daniel Denholm to redesign a song from each of the band's recent offerings – 'Nobody Knows I Love You' from 'Sancho' (2022) and 'Fallen Leaves' from 'Kookaburra' (2024).
'Beauty In Me' from 'Little Cloud' (2006) was reworked by Jamie Messenger as a lush orchestra-and-voice-only rendition, recounting its tale of self-doubt and determination through the eyes of a young girl. Lines such as: 'They'll see the beauty in me,' are emotionally expanded by the orchestra's tender moments.
"The first half of this tour tells the story of the friendship of the singer with a fellow called Charlie," Tim shares. "There are five songs in that cycle, which I've interspersed with atmospheric pieces, so it's lush and rich and slow. After the interval, we let the hair down, and go into higher gears."
Freedman explains his vision for the pieces' reconstruction as far more collaborative than simply expanding their existing ideas. He wanted the composers to breathe new musical stories into the worldworn tales, expanding their perspectives through notes.
"It's quite exciting, because the composers haven't just taken the melodies and doubled them. They've had license to create new melodies. So anyone that knows the songs will be enlivened by the experience, because there are a lot more hooks and points of interest with crescendos and decrescendos.
"It will be an interesting experience for someone who knows the records well. It's a great palette to play different emotions with woodwinds and strings and even percussion."
Being set amongst the orchestra's wall of sound is a performance place that Freedman adores. His post, one metre from the string section, the perfect viewpoint for the abundance of notes and percussion showering down upon him.
The exuberance can almost be too much, he shares, outlining his required restraint. "Playing with the full orchestra is uplifting and stirring. I have the best seat in the house one metre from the string section.
"I don't need any amplification. It's a beautiful organic sound. It's very exciting. We have to play in quite a controlled manner, so we don't dominate the orchestra in terms of dynamics. So you hold a quiet excitement on the inside."
The Whitlams will take their orchestral extravaganza onto the road across the first six months of next year, visiting major centres Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, alongside regional locations Newcastle and Toowoomba, with various ensembles stepping in to accompany the band.
After years of hearing the orchestra's countless notes emanating from their various instrumental forms, Freedman has settled on a favourite orchestral instrument, one which he has enjoyed experimenting with compositionally in recent times.
"At the moment, it's the clarinet. I took the liberty of changing one of Sculthorpe's principal violin parts into a clarinet because it adds to the mood of the sea, which is what the piece invokes. That works really well, with the roundness of the clarinet and its range. So, I'm a woodwind fellow at the moment."
The Whitlams Orchestral 2026 Tour Dates
Fri 30 Jan - State Theatre (Sydney)Sat 31 Jan - State Theatre (Sydney)* matinee & evening (sold out) shows
Fri 27 Feb - Wrest Point (Hobart)
Fri 6 Mar - QPAC (Brisbane)
Sat 7 Mar - QPAC (Brisbane)
Fri 13 Mar - Civic Theatre (Newcastle)
Sat 14 Mar - Civic Theatre (Newcastle)* sold out
Sat 11 Apr - Festival Theatre (Adelaide)
Sat 6 Jun - Empire Theatre (Toowoomba)
Sat 13 Jun - Riverside Theatre (Perth)
