Photo: Dallas Kilponen

It has been an unusual couple of weeks at Michael Leunig's place in north-eastern Victoria. He has been writing poems, then singing them down the phone. At the other end, the violinist Richard Tognetti has been taking notes. He was touring in China, so it wasn't always a good line (or a good time).

"I would dah-dah-dum-dum down the line to Shanghai," Leunig said. "And he would dah-dum back. And then Neil Finn would ring, from Auckland, and I'd dah-dum at him."

Now this unlikely trio - cartoonist, violinist and pop star - have created a work called Parables, Lullabies and Secrets.

"There are some people who say it's an unholy alliance, an unnatural one," says Leunig. "But, to me, it's just like different birds singing in different trees, in the same forest."

It was Leunig who brought Tognetti and Finn together. The cartoonist-philosopher knew Finn from the '80s, when both lived in St Kilda. Leunig also knew Tognetti, who is artistic director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, since the two worked together last year. "I got it into my head that these two men must meet. They belong together," Leunig said.

This, despite Tognetti's admission that Finn's career had "completely passed me by".

"You know, Split Enz, Crowded House, it just went right over my head," Tognetti said. "He just wasn't on my radar."

Over a dinner in Sydney last summer, Leunig convinced Tognetti that Finn was a poet and a folk singer repelled by his own celebrity.

"So I bought a CD and I listened to it a few times, and I thought, this man is a great artist," Tognetti said.

A dinner was arranged, and it ended with Tognetti and Finn standing together, singing and playing against a sinking sun.

Then came the task of convincing Finn to write music for a joint production.

"I wrote him a letter, in which I said to him, `Neil, do you think you could write a small melody for us, something symbolic, something that you could sing a baby to sleep with, or maybe to sing to somebody as they are dying, to help them let go?"' Leunig said.

"And, unknown to me at that time, his mother was very ill, she was in her dying days, and so it was very important to him, and he said he would very much like to do it. And once he said that, Richard said, `well, he must sing as well, and you must write poetry that we will set to music, and there will be children involved', and it's taken shape from there."

Leunig wrote the words, including the lovely Sweet Secret Peace, which Finn set to music.

"And that's such a privilege to me," he says, "to have a folk artist like Neil set those words to music. I'd rather have that than any literary prize."

Finn: "And for me, it is a privilege to put those words to music, because Michael's poems are so melodic, they read like lyrics. From the moment Michael wrote to me, I decided this was something I would be foolish not to do."

Finn has written the music for, and will perform with, Tognetti's Australian Chamber Orchestra. A children's choir, Gondwana Voices, will also take part. Sound sculptor Paul Healy and Australian composers Brett Dean and John Rodgers add to the mix.

Tognetti says he did the work because "people told me it was unnecessary and maybe even inappropriate to do it".

"The problem is that `pop' has become something of a dirty word, with all the junk around, the made-up pop groups, the trash on the radio," he says. "Classical music is about as far from that as you could hope to get. What Neil does is much closer to classical music than it is to pop music. For him, the music is the only thing, and the fact that he's a famous pop star is almost a pain in the butt.

"He is the least concerned by fame of anybody I know. In that way, he is similar to me. I think about those poor people on Big Brother, and I feel so sorry for them. From my point of view, that kind of fame would be awful."

Tognetti said Parables, Lullabies and Secrets would "cost much more than it makes" and include seven new Neil Finn songs.

Leunig will decorate the set, which he was last week busy doing in Sydney. "It's good for Richard to do this, because it's risky, and he needn't take risks," he said, between painting and rehearsals.

"He's got lots of secure, rewarding things to do, grand things. But he's a very curious person, and he has a natural creative spark, and that is what makes him so brilliant. He will take a chance."

For his part, Tognetti thinks Leunig is an "astonishing person, like a conduit. It's as if a higher force, a superior being, has pointed at him and said, you are going to be a prophet".

Both, in turn, consider Finn a musical genius, a folk singer for his times.

Leunig says: "It's like we are all children who want to play together, and so we have to make up a game, have to think of something to play."