Astra Season 2026
What times are these, where…
Six concerts with choir, solo vocalists and
a wide spectrum of other performers
experiment and new compositions
cooperations across cultures
environments with technology
past narratives in a radical present
What Times Are These
5pm, Sunday 17 May
Church of All Nations, Carlton
What times are these, where
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
Because it includes silence on so many atrocities!
– Bertolt Brecht, "To Generations Born After" 1939
Ninety years after Brecht, the need of one generation to account to others unborn is urgent again. Music itself is a constant interplay between generations of composition, poetry and historic experience – a flickering between present and past, with a capacity to express tensions and characters of a coming era.
Two choral trilogies by Australia’s senior composers Helen Gifford (b.1935) and George Dreyfus (b.1928) are the focus of Astra’s first concert for 2026. Each of the two cycles, composed two decades apart, “flickers” between graphic, contemporary musical styles and recollections of drastic historical moments.
Helen Gifford CATHARSIS (2001), three poems for choir
George Dreyfus, THREE PIECES FOR CHOIR (2020–22)
with music by Heinrich Schütz, Gustav Mahler, Max Reger, Alma Mahler, Stefan Wolpe, György Ligeti, Samir Odeh-Tamimi;
after poems of Hölderlin, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Lenau, Falke, Dehmel, Anna Akhmatova, Kathleen Raine, Elizabeth Riddell, Bertolt Brecht, Mahmoud Darwish, George Dreyfus.
THE ASTRA CHOIR & SOLOISTS
Kim Bastin and Peter Dumsday (solo piano)
Timothy Phillips (percussion)
conducted by John McCaughey
Patterns of Plants 2
with ASTRAL VOICES
植物文様
Music of Mamoru Fujieda
with traditional Japanese and early music
5:30pm & 8pm, Saturday June 13
In June, Astra continues its exploration of Patterns of Plants, an ongoing collaboration with Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda that unfolds across different forms and performances. In this new iteration, Astral Voices - a vocal chamber ensemble launched in 2026 - joins the original seven-piece cross-cultural ensemble in a program with new works by Fujieda written for this concert.
Drawn from electrical signals recorded from plant leaves using the “Plantron” device, Patterns of Plants — a series developed by Fujieda over more than three decades — translates these subtle fluctuations into delicate, unfolding musical patterns. In these new works, Fujieda extends this process into multiple voices.
Musicians from across Australia and Japan come together for a program that places Fujieda’s music alongside works spanning centuries and cultures — from arrangements of medieval motets by Guillaume de Machaut to 19th-century Japanese koto repertoire.
Miyama McQueen-Tokita, koto & voice
Laura Vaughan, viola da gamba
Julia Fredersdorff, baroque violin
Brandon Lee, koto
Ryan Williams, recorders
Henry Liang, sho
Alexander Ritter, countertenor
with
ASTRAL VOICES
Directed by Andrew Byrne
