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Sydney Chamber Choir Gives Voice To The Human Spirit
September 23, 2023 @ 7:30 pm
Sydney Chamber Choir conducted by Sam Allchurch gives voice to powerful Latvian traditions of songs against oppression, to Palestinian poetic visions and an exquisite celebration of Australian nature in a concert entitled The Human Spirit.
The Human Spirit includes the world premiere of Espoir (Hope) by rising star, Elizabeth Younan, drawing on her Arabic heritage and the yearning words of Lebanese-Palestinian poet May Ziadeh. When the World Closes its Eyes by fellow Sydney composer Ella Macens will be reprised with Macens’ glorious mix of pop, classical, folk and Baltic traditions – and her salute to a famed Latvian song of national resistance. Direct from Latvia, where singing is so integral to its culture, come the radiant Kyrie and Gloria from Missa Rigensis by Uģis Prauliņš, a boy chorister himself in Riga Cathedral and later eclectic rock musician. It’s an intense and intimate work melding, he says, his own traditions with the great Renaissance choral masses, “but without overwhelming force or volume”.
Central to The Human Spirit concert is An Australian song cycle by the prolific screen and symphonic composer Joe Twist, with his evocative visions of our landscape, drawing words from seven of our best poets – and its devastation from bushfires. Applauded for his recent Adelaide Festival oratorio Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan, Twist says his first inspiration for this major song cycle was the vibrant rainforests of his childhood on the Gold Coast.
The Human Spirit includes the Credo from Missa Unitatis, a radically exuberant celebration of the traditionally solemn mass by British composer Antony Pitts, former AD of Sydney’s Song Company.
Tickets From $50 (concessions available)
Bookings www.sydneychamberchoir.org
Phone 1300 661 738
Read our review of Sydney Chamber Choir’s last concert, Winter Nights.
The Human Spirit is also available streamed as a digital concert on Thursday, 28 September at 7.30pm.
Price $24. Tickets at Australian Digital Concert Hall.
Image by Pedro Greig.