Musician Paul Dean admits a few people baulked at the title of his latest concert. Dean is an associate professor at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University and a talented clarinet player and composer.

With wife Trish, a cellist, he founded Ensemble Q, a current QPAC ensemble in residence. The couple are con-artistic directors of the ensemble and their latest concert on Sunday (July 16) afternoon will continue their themed approach to presenting music.

Their Sunday concerts are presented in reverse mode in the Concert Hall which means you are on stage up close and personal. It’s an intimate way to enjoy chamber music, that’s for sure.

Ensemble Q’s last concert was entitled Deep Blue with the accent on the sea and Dean, who is obviously a good sport, donned goggles and flippers for publicity shots.

This time around the theme is Fish, Chips and Warm Beer, a guided journey through the music of Britain through the eyes of the much-loved Ralph Vaughan Williams. Folk songs by the much-loved English composer will be interspersed through the concert which comes at a funny time in our history when being British isn’t fashionable despite the fact that so many of us trace our ancestry to the British Isles.

“Britishness is not being deliberately celebrated at the moment,” Paul Dean confesses. “So, we did have some funny reactions initially. People seemed to be put off by the title. A lot of classical music suffers from that lack of laughing at oneself but we have a different point of view about that.”

And people have warmed to it now, like the beer.

Paul Dean admits celebrating Britishness coming off a recent Aussie Ashes defeat is ironic. But surely the Poms deserved to win one Test?

“Absolutely not,” Dean says adding that despite his own strong British heritage he will not give an inch when it comes to cricket.

Ensemble Q has a core of musicians with guest artists each time they perform. Popular Queensland Symphony Orchestra double bass player Phoebe Russell is a regular and for this performance she got into the spirit posing for publicity shots flanked by a Union Jack and with the titular fish and chips and warm beer in hand.

But here’s the thing – “I actually don’t eat fish and I don’t like beer,” Russell says. “But I like the music. Actually, I have a British passport and have spent a fair bit of time in the Uk.

“We will be playing a section of beautiful chamber pieces. For me the highlight will be the Benjamin Britten sinfonietta (Sinfonietta Opus 1) which is an incredible piece I’ve never had the chance to perform until now.”

There will also be music by Elizabeth Maconchy, Thomas Ades, Frank Bridge, Malcolm Arnold and Frederick Septimus Kelly.

Paul Dean says Kelly’s piece, Elegy for Strings in Memoriam Rupert Brooke, is particularly moving and was written in battle on the Somme.

“He finished his elegy and then got shot,” Dean says. “We lost a lot of composers on both sides in the First World War.”

Kelly, who was born in Sydney, wrote in his diary on Friday 21 May 1915 “… the whole of the afternoon bullets has been whistling continuously over my dug-out. I have ever since the day of Rupert Brooke’s death been composing an elegy for string orchestra… Today I felt my way right through to the end of it…” Brooke’s war poetry lives on.

Kelly, or ‘Cleg’ as he was known to his mates, was one of those rare all-rounders, a gifted musician and athlete, World War I Officer and diarist. He is claimed as both a British and Australian composer.

Dean says he and his wife Trish had their honeymoon in England, “a working honeymoon” as he describes it and they were inspired to theme this concert by the beautiful English landscape. Strangely though the idea came to him in Australia.

“Fish, Chips and Warm Beer was actually devised in the Adelaide Hills,” Dean says. “It was after a performance that took us to the beautiful Mt Barker area so full of rolling hills and green and blue hued vistas that reminded us both of being in England and of the incredibly atmospheric music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Being lovers of the edginess and creativity of the backstreets of London and with a great fondness for rejecting the norm we created what we think of as a musical version of our perfect trip to England.”

And just in case you are wondering …yes, fish and chips is on the menu at QPAC on Sunday. But we’re not sure how warm the beer will be. And continuing the themed concerts Ensemble Q’s next concert in October is entitled The Dinner Party. And we’re all invited.