Sublime Voices (2021)
ANU Chamber Choir joined Luminescence Chamber Singers for series of workshops, including ‘side by side’ rehearsal and performance experiences for advanced students. The week culminated in a free performance at the ANU School of Music.
Vietnam Requiem, June 2021 (Peter Hislop)
Vietnam Requiem (2021)
Created and directed by Chris Latham, Artist-in-Residence at the AWM, Flowers of War brought together Australia’s leading composers and performing artists to create this memorable theatrical concert. The Requiem tells stories from both abroad and at home, on the 50th anniversary of our withdrawal from Vietnam. Luminescence Children’s Choir were delighted to be featured in the final movement, and soprano Rachel Mink appeared as a featured soloist.
Canberra International Music Festival (2021)
Luminescence Chamber Singers performed in 2 programmes for CIMF2021: ‘Mozart Recomposed’, and ‘Far and Near’. In Mozart Recomposed, Gordon Hamilton’s gave Mozart’s Requiem sketches the Max Richter treatment, throwing new contemporary light on this sacred classic score. In Far and Near, we joined The Australian Voices to perform more than 20 newly commissioned works, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Little Match Girl Passion (2021)
Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 tale, The Little Match Girl Passion tells the sad story of a girl who freezes to death, selling matches on the street on a cold winter’s night. David Lang’s musical realisation of this classic fable is a groundbreaking, genre-defining and Pulitzer Prize-winning work. Modelled on Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Lang alternates between narrative and commentary, but as the composer himself put it, “there is no Bach in this piece and there is no Jesus”. Instead, the tragic story of the little match girl is transformed into a modern reflection on suffering, poverty, and sacrifice – it is a passion for our times.
Luminescence Chamber Singers performed the Little Match Girl Passion alongside renaissance polyphony for Passiontide, including music by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Pierre De la Rue, and Carlo Gesualdo.
Every Heart Sings (2021)
In 2020-2021 Luminescence Children’s Choir joined forces with Jess Green (aka Pheno), Patricia Piccinini, and the National Gallery of Australia in ‘We Are The Skywhales’, a song written for ‘Every Heart Sings’, the launch of the Skywhale family. Luminescence Children’s Choir recorded vocals for the pop song, in addition to a choral arrangement. Luminescence performed live at three dawn flights of the Skywhale family, as well as at the Every Heart Sings launch-day book reading at the National Gallery.
Four Winds Festival: Carols in the Pavilion (2020)
Four Winds is an arts organisation renowned for presenting and producing leading national and international musicians and experiences in a pristine natural environment – thirty acres of bushland at Bermagui on the stunning Far South Coast of NSW, Australia. The experience at Four Winds is one in which the music and the audience are immersed in nature.
Six singers from the Luminescence Chamber Singers and guest director Roland Peelman returned to Bermagui to perform a Christmas recital hosted by Four Winds Festival. This recital featured a selection of music from A Luminous Christmas.
At Four Winds Pavilion, December 2020
A Luminous Christmas (2020)
In 2020, Luminescence Chamber Singers and Canberra International Music Festival collaborated to host A Luminous Christmas - a three day Christmas festival. This event represented a significant expansion of our annual Christmas with Luminescence concerts. Festival offerings included seven concerts (three programs) in Wesley Uniting Church featuring Luminescence Chamber Singers and Children's Choir, as well as four concerts (two programs) in Verity Lane, featuring William Barton, Simon Barker, and the Pocket Trio.
A Luminous Christmas: Christmas Classics (2020)
Twelve voices, one for each day of Christmas.
Christmas Classics featured an expanded 12 voice Luminescence Chamber Singers, Canberra International Music Festival Artistic Director Roland Peelman, Luminescence Children's Choir, and James Porteous (organ). This program featured favourite carols from around the world, including a new arrangement of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
A Luminous Christmas: Puer Natus Est (2020)
Puer natus est. A boy is born.
The ancient chant for the midnight mass that expanded into glorious polyphony immortalised through motets by Byrd, Palestrina and Victoria. Directed by Roland Peelman, this programme featured seven singers performing Christmas music from the Renaissance.
A Luminous Christmas: Ceremony of Carols (2020)
A Ceremony of Carols is one of Benjamin Britten's most well known and widely loved works - a staple of non-liturgical christmas repertoire. These seven carols, initially conceived as individual works, were inspired by texts from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems – an anthology of medieval poetry and other medieval carols. Ceremony of Carols exudes joy and captures that particular kind of innocence that saturates Britten’s music for young voices. After all, who better than children to herald the rebirth of spring, angels on high, the joy and mystery of the Incarnation, or sing a peaceful lullaby for the Christ-child?
Ceremony of Carols featured Luminescence Children's Choir and Alice Giles (harp). It was conducted and directed by AJ America.
Satellites (2020)
Satellites is a multimedia digital collaboration between Luminescence Children's Choir, composer Dan Walker, and videographer Stephen Beeby. Over 2 months, choristers worked remotely with Dan Walker, composing melodies and text about their experiences in lockdown. Choristers explored their changing relationships to concepts such as space, distance, and connectivity. The work was born from the particular paradox of living through COVID-19: lockdown demanded isolation, but for many of them it was the first time they had a shared experience with people across the world, on such a large scale. Satellites was rehearsed, recorded and filmed in July 2020, and premiered via youtube.
Recording ‘Satellites’, June 2020
Venite, Venite! (2020)
If, as the old saying goes, creativity loves constraints, COVID-19 offered plenty of inspiration. While the rapid turn to digital productions and 'take-away' concerts offered rich artistic opportunities, many were also struck by the palpable, undeniable feeling that no virtual choir or digital concert could truly compare to the magic of an ephemeral moment shared between musicians on stage and an audience. Venite, Venite! was Luminescence Chamber Singers' first public performance of 2020 - an intimate recital for three voices and guitar, featuring music by John Dowland, Mátyás Seiber, Benjamin Britten and Manuel Da Falla. Venite, meaning 'come!' symbolised Luminescence's eager invitation to our audiences and friends to join us once again for the joy of live performance.
Past Projects and Performance History
Selected performance highlights
Exile Lamentations (2020)
Exile Lamentations is a musical expression of the grief, loss, and yearning for home associated with displacement. It explores anguish as well as the enduring sense of hope threaded through music about exile. The core of this programme is Thomas Tallis’s widely admired Lamentations of Jeremiah and Paul Stanhope’s choral triptych Exile Lamentations. The repertoire presented in Exile Lamentations spanned over 500 years. Of course, this music is as much about the notion of home as it is about banishment and dispersion. In a year when staying home was so central to our safety, many are still seeking a refuge from homes torn apart by conflict, instability, and environmental crisis, and this music felt all the more pertinent.
Christmas with Luminescence (2019)
Christmas with Luminescence brings together all of our artists to herald the festive season with songs of peace, joy, and the Christmas story. In 2019, our programme encompassed music by William Byrd, Zoltan Kodály, Richard Rodney Bennett, John Rutter, and Benjamin Britten, as well as a number of works by Australian composers, including Ben Van-Tienen and Joseph Twist.
In addition to our annual Christmas with Luminescence concerts, our 2019 Christmas season saw Luminescence Children's Choir perform two concerts in Garema Place, supported by the City Renewal Authority. The Luminescence Chamber Singers also joined Ed Ayres and the Weekend Breakfast program live from the National Gallery of Australia, for ABC Classical Christmas. Luminescence Chamber Singers also travelled to Bermagui to perform a Christmas recital hosted by Four Winds Festival.
Stabat Mater (2019)
Pergolesi's Stabat Mater is perhaps the most famous setting of this well-known and widely utilised text. Described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as "the most perfect and touching duet to come from the pen of any composer", the medieval text describes Mary witnessing the suffering of her Son on the cross. Today, the work resonates far beyond the ecclesiastical tradition for which it was originally intended. It is a profoundly human portrait of a grieving mother.
Our performance of Stabat Mater featured Luminescence Children's Choir and soloists Chloe Lankshear and Stephanie Dillon, alongside instrumentalists from Canberra Sinfonia, set in the stunning sounds of Wesley Uniting Church.
Open Book, 2019
Open Book (2019)
Performed by 6 voices in the beautiful acoustics of the Drill Hall Gallery, this sold-out programme gave audiences an intimate experience of music that spanned some 600 years of vocal writing. Including late 14th Century songs from the Red Book of Monteserrat, excerpts from the Eton Choirbook, Monteverdi, and Gavin Bryar's collections of modern madrigals, this programme featured collected editions of vocal music and sought to lay bare their extraordinary contents: music that exemplifies the raw and transformative power of human voices, weaving together to express beauty, suffering, love, and lust.
Gondwana World Choral Festival (2019)
In July 2018, Luminescence Children's Choir travelled to Sydney to perform in the Gondwana World Choral Festival, the largest gathering of international choirs in Australia this century. Over 10 days, the choir performed in the Sydney Opera House, Verbrugghen Hall, and other Sydney Conservatorium venues. They performed alongside some of the world's finest choirs, including the Nagoya Children's Choir, the Riga Cathedral Girls' Choir, the Estonian Television and Radio Choir, and the Boston Children's Choir.
Tracks and Traces (2019)
From Scandinavian folk song to medieval chant, virtuosic Australian art music, and French polyphony, the musical offerings of this concert of female voices took listeners on a journey across 4 continents and 900 years. At the heart of this project was Brett Dean's Tracks and Traces, which features four texts by Indigenous Australian poets, Ernie Dingo, Debby Barben, and Grandfather Koori. Dean's visceral depiction of violence, desperation, and oppression is rendered all the more powerful when juxtaposed with songs of love, light, sorrow, and reverance. Tracks and Traces concludes with a piercing imperative from Australian poet Michael Leunig:
"Love one another and you will be happy, it's as simple and difficult as that".
Tracks and Traces, 2019
Canberra International Music Festival (2019)
In CIMF2019, Luminescence Chamber Singers performed alongside Bach Akademie Australia and Conductor-harpsichordist Korneel Bernolet in Testament, the 2019 Festival Finale.
Luminescence Children's Choir also appeared at the festival for the first time, joining Turner Trebles, Vocal Fry, and Canberra Grammar School Choirs and conductor Leonard Weiss in Bach For All.
Last Verses (2019)
Last Verses marked Luminescence's first collaboration with Canberra Sinfonia. This program brought together two of Canberra's finest young classical ensembles and presented two twenty-first century compositions that confront death in very different ways: Arvo Pärt's Adam's Lament and Dan Walker's Last Verses. Adam's Lament casts Adam's biblical suffering as symbolic of all human agony. Last Verses takes its texts from the final poems of five writers, DH Lawrence’s “Shadow”, Robert Herrick’s “The White Island”, Elinor Wylie’s “Feathers Torn from Living Birds”, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Terminus” and Thomas Hardy’s “He Never Expected Much”. This work gives voice to the precious and the precarious; death's inevitability casts the vast and vivid joys and disappointments of life into sharp relief.
Christmas with Luminescence (2018)
Christmas with Luminescence brought together both our ensembles in a joyous celebration of festive music, featuring Poulenc’s Quatre Motets Noel, as well as music by Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, and more. Both Luminescence Chamber Singers and Luminescence Children’s Choir appeared again at ‘Carols in the Court’ at the High Court, and Luminescence Chamber Singers appeared as guest artists for local community choir The Wayfarers performance, ‘My Spirit Rejoices’, performing Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat.
Christmas with Luminescence, 2018
In rehearsals for Frank Martin Mass
Frank Martin Mass (2018)
Luminescence Chamber Singers joined the Consort of Melbourne and Roland Peelman to perform one of the great devotional masterpieces of choral repertoire - Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir. The movements of the mass were interspersed with newly commissioned works by four Australian composers, each from a different spiritual perspective. This project uses the beauty of human voices in harmony to comment on the profound connections between different traditions of spirituality, and the role of music in different customs of worship.
Festival of Voices (2018)
Festival of Voices marked Luminescence Children’s Choir’s first ever tour. A small group of choristers travelled to Hobart to deliver a number of concerts as part of Festival of Voices, including performances at Hobart Town Hall and Federation Concert Hall. The choir also participated in a number of workshops alongside Sydney Children’s Choir, Young Voices of Melbourne, and a number of local choirs. After the festival, Luminescence Children’s Choir travelled on to Melbourne to collaborate and perform with Mark O’Leary and the Young Voices of Melbourne.
Canberra International Music Festival (2018)
Luminescence was involved in three events at CIMF in 2018. We performed Handel’s epic ‘Israel in Egypt’, alongside Bach Akademie Australia and Coro. In Ulysses Now, we joined I Bassifondi to perform scenes from Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria (1640). This performance featured a number of soloists from Luminescence , including soprano Chloe Lankshear, mezzo-soprano AJ America, tenor Dan Walker, and a treble soloist from Luminescence Children’s Choir. In Requiem we performed a set of unaccompanied works in the stunning surrounds of the Australian War Memorial.
Americans in Paris (2018)
Americans in Paris showcased the music of Nadia Boulanger and her American students, including Phillip Glass, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Louise Talma. Programmed by baritone Patrick Baker, this program was performed in Canberra and Braidwood.
Christmas with Luminescence: Stille Nacht (2017)
In 2017, Christmas with Luminescence presented music by William Byrd, Herbert Howells, Brett Dean, Orlando Lasso, and Gordon Hamilton. At the heart of this programme was two of new settings of the much loved German carol, ‘Stille Nacht’: a new arrangement by Alice Chance for female trio, and a newly commissioned work by Meta Cohen for 8 solo voices, treble choir, and cello, with text by Russell Buzby.
Stille Nacht, 2017
.Christmas in the Crypt (2017)
Performed in the stunning acoustic of St Mary’s Crypt (Sydney), Christmas in the Crypt brought together a number of old friends. An expanded chamber choir of 24 voices led guest director Carl Crossin performed music by Clare Maclean, Jocelyn Hagen, William Byrd, Christopher Wiggins and more.
Diva! 2017
Diva! (2017)
Featuring popular soprano Amelia Farrugia, Diva! payed tribute to the lives and careers of Australian divas June Bronhill and Dame Joan Sutherland. Luminescence Chamber Singers joined Farrugia, Tamara Anna Cislowska and a chamber ensemble to perform Elena Katz-Chernin’s La Stupenda.
Songs My Mother Taught Me (2017)
Songs and stories passed down between generations has long been a pillar of culture and community. In this concert, the Chamber Singers and Children's Choir join forces to perform folk songs from around the world, including music from Finland, China, and Lithuania. This programme included contemporary interpretations of folk songs and traditional texts, including well-known Australian bush ballad “Click Go The Shears”.
CIMF Opening Gala, 2017
Canberra International Music Festival (2017)
Luminescence Chamber Singers appeared in four programmes for CIMF 2017. At the Opening Gala, we performed world premiere of the 2017 ‘Betty Beaver Blaze’ by Robert Davidson. In Harvest of Endurance we joined the Song Company, Ensemble Offspring, in a program featuring 18 new works inspired by a 50-metre scroll painted in traditional gong bi style, which depicts Chinese settlement in Australia over 200 years. In Why Do The Nations? we joined the Song Company once again to perform Andrew Ford’s ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, and in The Art of Speech we joined Gordon Hamilton, The Australian Voices and Topology to perform musical settings of Australia’s most famous political speeches, in tribute to the words and moments that shaped the nation.
Performing the Jewish Archive: Out of the Shadows (2017)
Out of the Shadows was part of a three year project to uncover and revive lost work. In the aftermath of war and genocide, refugees who found safe haven brought with them cultural works about exile, diaspora and flight. Luminescence joined a line up including the Goldner String Quartet, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows Ensemble, and the Sydney Children’s Choir and performed recovered sacred and secular Jewish choral works.
Lagrime D’Amante: At the Tomb of the Beloved (2017)
The Italian madrigal tradition of the 17th century produced some of the world’s most innovative and finely crafted vocal music: powerful and achingly beautiful. They are stories of love and loss, pain and sorrow, joy and renewal.
Conducted by guest director Dan Walker, this concert featured Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna and Sestina, two turbulent works by Gesualdo, as well as music from De Wert, Marenzio, and several works by contemporary Italian composers such as Ildebrando Pizzetti, whose rich harmonies and sensitivities echo the music of his renaissance forebears - a reminder the Italian madrigal tradition is alive and well today.
Christmas with Luminescence: Dormi Jesu (2016)
Conducted by guest director Bengt Olov Palmqvist, the Luminescence Chamber Singers and Luminescence Children's Choir joined forces to present a program of moving music for the festive season. Featuring music by Franz Biebl, Pavel Chesnokov, Benjamin Britten, Saunders Choi, and Palmqvist, DORMI, JESU was the third annual iteration of ‘Christmas with Luminescence’.
Carols in Parliament House (2016)
Luminescence Children’s Choir performed a short set of festive music in the foyer of Parliament House, offering a dose of choral cheer to politicians and their staffers in the lead up to Christmas. Choristers had an opportunity to chat with a number of politicians after their performance, including Andrew Leigh MP.
Carols in the Court (2016)
Luminescence Chamber Singers and Children’s Choir joined sopranos Louise Page and Louise Keast and a brass fanfare for the annual ‘Carols in the Court’ at the High Court of Australia. This joyous concert is free to the public, and raises money via donations for charity each year. We were delighted to be involved for a number of years as performers.
Carols in the Court, 2016
Descent into Madness, 2016
Descent into Madness (2016)
Conducted by acclaimed composer Gordon Hamilton, this dramatic concert took us on journey into the depths of musical madness. Featuring the world premiere of a ‘Infernal Women’ by Alice Chance, as well as music by Gesualdo, Elliott Gyger, Katy Abbott and Rob Davidson, Descent into Madness juxtaposed chaos and clarity, the scary and the silly.
Descent into Madness was performed in Canberra, Sydney, Port Macquarie, and Newcastle. The opening night concert in Canberra also featured the first official performance of the newly established Luminescence Children's Choir, conduced by AJ America.
Singing Swiftly (2016)
Singing Swiftly presented a collection of old and new madrigals, including a number of world premiere works composed by founding member, Olivia Swift. From the music of Monteverdi to new work by Swift, Joshua Shank, David Yardley, Paul Stanhope, this programme proves the Madrigal is by no means a relic of the Renaissance, it is alive and well!
Singing Swiftly, 2016
Songs of Triumph (2016)
Music for the Easter season, from Mendelssohn, Schutz, Tallis and Bairstow to Nigel Butterley, David Childs, Jacob Narverud, Patrick Baker, and Alberto Ginastera.
Christmas with Luminescence: Now Comes the Dawn (2015)
In 2015, Christmas with Luminescence featured a broader array of music than ever - from traditional medieval carols to Christmas favourites, and contemporary works by acclaimed composer Brett Dean. The program featured Dean’s ‘Now Comes the Dawn’, Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Hymn to the Virgin’ and Herbert Howells’ ‘A Spotless Rose’, as well as a number of contemporary settings of classic carols, including Jocelyn Hagen’s ‘O Come, Emmanuel’ and Gordon Hamilton’s settings of traditional German carols.
Choral Kaleidoscope (2015)
Choral Kaleidoscope was a variety concert that brought together a number of community choirs and singing students under the tutelage of Luminescence members. The performance showcased four local choirs, as well as 6 school-aged singing students. All participants had the opportunity to experience rehearsing and performing with the Chamber Singers. Choral Kaleidoscope was the first experimental prelude to directly to the establishment of the Luminescence Children’s Choir.
Sally Whitwell and Sally Greenaway at the High Court (2015)
This project brought together two award-winning Australian composer-pianists performing original compositions. Luminescence Chamber Singers joined Whitwell and Greenaway to perform a number of their vocal and choral works.
The Four Seasons (2015)
Each season brings it own joys, it’s own sorrows. Featuring music by Robert Pearsall, Claude Le Jeune, Joshua Shank, David Wikander, Ross Edwards, and more, this program celebrated the stillness of winter, the fresh, expectant joys of spring, long summer days, and falling autumn leaves.
Noël! (2014)
Luminescence joined Louise Page OAM to perform Noel! Music for the Advent Season, featuring music by Praetorius, Sculthorpe and more.
The True Samaritan (2014)
The True Samaritan marked our first performance as a chamber ensemble. Programmed together, this concert set us on our journey and in many ways, set the stage for the years to come. This concert featured music by much loved composers such as Heinrich Schutz and Francis Poulenc as well as contemporary composers Joshua Himes and Ian Stephens. At the heart of this program was Australian composer Nigel Butterley’s momentous multi-movement work, The True Samaritan.