David Bowie tribute concert Nothing Has Changed shakes Hamer Hall's foundations

"Nothing has changed, everything has changed," is the full David Bowie couplet that gives this rock-orchestral tribute its name. The "everything" is still hard to bear sometimes, like when Tim Rogers slides down his microphone stand wringing those agonising notes of rage from the dying light of Lazarus.

But "we're all here because we love David," he had reminded us earlier, in between his sizzling Fame duet with Deborah Conway and saucy Sorrow with Adalita​. If anything has changed on that score since the great man's passing, it's exponentially.

Dressed in outlandish homage to Bowie's Ashes To Ashes Pierrot, iOTA's first line to Major Tom was a lightning rod for a physical rush of affection from the crowd. The joy on his white-painted face told a story of liberation so many of us shared. His soaring Life On Mars? was another high that drew vocal surges of emotion from the dark.

Conway's grin might have been equally about the sheer good fortune of having a song like Starman or Ziggy Stardust to sing, loaded with all that melody and drama and ingenious allegory. With almost breathless admiration, she framed the lyrics of Oh You Pretty Things to underscore Bowie's extraordinary prescience as a young man.

Darker characters haunted Steve Kilbey​'s songs, his face a mask of concentration as he channelled the post-apocalyptic decadence of Diamond Dogs, the psychopathic sugar daddy of China Girl – an ironically playful duet with Robyn Loau​– and the cocaine-enlightened Thin White Duke in the show's most ambitious selection, Station to Station.