Frances M. Lynch, though, is quite a lady. By sheer force of personality and artistic and technical wizardry (should that be witchcraft?) she seized our attention and held us in the palm of her hand through what was at times not an easy journey, if tempered by wit, irony and self-effacing humour. Patronised (matronised?) we were not, even when she told us that we were now a contemporary music audience. She went straight into ‘The Cathedral of Trees’, by Judith Bingham, a singer herself, an arrestingly contemporary piece which nevertheless displayed a recognisable and restrained emotional palette. The emotions in Paul Barker’s ‘Songs between Words’ (i.e. no words) were less restrained, varying from gentle to funny to terrifying, and this was a dramatic tour deforce, all built on the way we never quite seem to understand our partners.