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Since its formation in 1994, variety has come the way of The Melbourne Women’s Choir. Its first event was to sing in the Melbourne-hosted Women Composers Conference, and it has sung with the Japanese women’s choir Kanazawa, the N.Z. women’s Cecilian Singers, has partnered the men of The Melbourne Chamber Choir on a Channel 7 Football Show, and has joined the women of The Melbourne Chamber Choir singing with the Melbourne and the Sydney Symphony orchestras. It has shared platforms with The Melbourne Mastersingers, the Welsh Male Choir from Ghent, Wales and the Adelaide Male Voice choir, has been involved in a season of a gospel musical, and was one of the choirs in the Classical Spectacular in Melbourne Park in 2000. The Choir is host to the Voices of Women festival in Melbourne. In 2005 the members of the Melbourne Women’s Choir travelled to South Australia to share in a similar festival of women’s choirs in Adelaide. In 2006 all donned nuns’ costumes and sang a Sister Act gig at the Sofitel Hotel in Melbourne. In 2009 the women, in combination with the women of The Melbourne Chamber Choir, sang Holst’s The Planets with the Stonnington Symphony Orchestra.
The repertoire of the Melbourne Women’s Choir is varied, from 12th century chant of Hildegard Von Bingen to Elizabethan madrigals, sacred music across many centuries, love songs of the Romantics, arrangements of folk songs, spirituals, gospel songs and modern songs for women’s voices; and performance of recent composition. The choir has performed and premiered pieces by Australian composers. In 2008 a substantial part of the Sing Me to Heaven concert was of Australian music. A continuing project has been the performance of music written for the young women of the Venetian ospedale – orphanages – from the 1600s to 1800s — by such composers as Vivaldi, Porpora, Hasse, Galuppi and Gasparini. This year the Melbourne Women’s Choir will perform more selections edited by Faye Dumont. The choir has recorded some of this historic music to parallel the historic novel of the period being written by one of its members, Christine Balint.
The choir’s concert programme for 2009 is now available.
You can make concert bookings by going to the booking information on the 2009 brochure.
The Melbourne Women’s Choir welcomes auditions throughout the year.
Last Updated: 2009-08-23.