The Australian Voices

Since then, the choir has championed an astonishing flourish of new Australian vocal music, having commissioned hundreds of new works.

In 2014, the choir made international headlines with commissioned musicalisations of political speeches by Rob Davidson. Not Now, Not Ever! – based on Julia Gillard’s famous ‘misogyny speech’ – went viral as a YouTube video, and a treatment of Noel Pearson’s eulogy to Gough Whitlam was premiered in Pearson’s presence on ABC’s Q&A program on live TV.

The Australian Voices released a songbook with Edition Peters in 2013, featuring some of the group’s best-known repertoire. Their most recent album is Elsewhere (2019), praised by Limelight Magazine as “aurally awe-inspiring”.

Recently, the choir has collaborated with numerous Australian musicians and ensembles: in 2019, the choir performed Britten’s Cantata Misericordium and a ‘re-composition’ of Mozart’s Requiem by then-Artistic Director Gordon Hamilton in collaboration with Omega Ensemble; in 2022, collaborated with ARIA-nominated artist Raphael Karlen and Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra to premiere Sinking Cities, a work for string orchestra, choir, and saxophone; and at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the choir commissioned 22 (mostly) Australian composers to write a choral work on the theme “Far and Near”, in response to the darkening of concert halls around the world.

The group has also brought their distinctly Australian sound to audiences in Guatemala, Mexico, China, the UK, Germany, New Caledonia, USA, Palestine, Woodford Folk Festival and Hobart Festival of Voices.