A heavenly voice deserves a heavenly venue and for Katie Stenzel St Mary’s Anglican Church at Kangaroo Point is pitch perfect.
This historic church has a music program that has become popular in recent years and it’s set in a gorgeous heritage-listed churchyard on Main Street. It was designed by Richard George Suter and built in 1873 by Alfred Grant and was added to the Queensland Heritage Register in 1992.
It’s the venue for the latest in the St Mary’s Recital Series: Katie Stenzel & Stewart Kelly. They have dubbed the event Partners in Song – and it’s on November 1.
Stenzel is a dynamic, coloratura soprano described by Limelight magazine as possessing “a powerful and perfectly controlled upper range”. She has established herself as an engaging and multi-faceted performer across Australia and internationally with companies including State Opera South Australia, Opera Queensland, Opera Australia, The Brisbane Festival, The Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Taipei Drama Festival in Taiwan.
She’s a city girl from Brisbane but she also loves the wide, open spaces of Queensland and has sung at Opera Queensland’s Festival of Outback Opera. In fact, she’s the face of that event in 2026 and will again be singing under the big skies of Queensland’s Outback.
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Stenzel says she’s looking forward to that but also to performing in the sacred space of St Mary’s. She will be performing with her university friend, pianist Stewart Kelly, and she’s at pains to point out that he is not merely her accompanist. They have equal billing.
“We’ll be presenting a gorgeous program of lieder and art song featuring composers such as Strauss, Barber, Grieg, Faure and Copland,” she says. “Stewart and I became great friends when we were studying our Bachelor of Music at QUT. Geography has kept us apart since then. When we realised we’d never performed together in a professional setting we decided to remedy that with this recital.”
Kelly is from the Gold Coast but is now based in Melbourne. He is, among other things, founder and artistic director of Music by the Springs, a chamber music festival held in Victoria each February.
Stenzel is fresh from her sell-out show, The Telephone, at Brisbane Festival. Billed as “a pocket-sized rom-com opera” it featured Stenzel and characterful baritone Jon Maskell, who brought the laughs and romance alongside virtuoso local pianist Alex Raineri.
The program, presented in City Hall during Brisbane Festival, began with highlights of great American opera, with arias by Douglas Moore, Leonard Bernstein and others, before moving on to the main event: Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti’s mercifully short (half an hour) chamber opera, The Telephone.
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“It’s a chamber opera in English and it is comedic and it was a sell-out at City Hall,” she says with some pride and possibly relief. She will be taking a break after her St Mary’s gig and then will be looking forward to heading out west for next year’s Festival of Outback Opera.
“For a city girl I wasn’t expecting to feel as enthusiastic as I am now about the Outback,” she says. “But there’s the absolute warmth you receive from every person you meet. That welcome, the landscape and making music out there is quite indescribable. And all their advertising campaigns for the event next year feature me, which is an immense privilege.”
But you don’t have to go quite as far to hear her sing if you plan on attending her recital at St Mary’s. And don’t be put off that it’s in a church because you are welcome, even if you don’t have a religious bone in your body. The St Mary’s website outlines how welcome you will be:
“Our parish is a mosaic of individuals from all walks of life, each contributing their perspectives and passions to our spiritual journey. While we hold a strong Anglican tradition close to our hearts, our doors are wide open to everyone, regardless of their familiarity with Anglicanism or Christianity.
“At Saint Mary’s, we believe in fostering an environment of learning and growth, where questions are welcomed, and journeys of faith are embraced. Central to our identity is an appreciation for music and traditional Anglican services. Our melodies and hymns connect us to a liturgical heritage that spans generations.”
Which is a lovely sentiment and one couldn’t imagine a more beautiful setting – by the Kangaroo Point cliffs – for an afternoon recital featuring one of Queensland’s favourite singers. Events such as this suit Katie Stenzel perfectly as a mum to three-year-old Harry.
“I pick and choose what suits me and my family,” she says. And, in this case, a Saturday afternoon recital fits in nicely for her … and for her audience.
St Mary’s Recital Series: Katie Stenzel & Stewart Kelly, Partners in Song, St Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point, November 1, 4pm-5pm.