2024 Season
musical directors: Andrew Byrne, John McCaughey
Astra enters a new era in 2024. Andrew Byrne joins longtime musical director John McCaughey in devising and directing an expanded season of concerts. Byrne's quarter-century of experience as artistic director and composer in New York brings new impulses to Astra's tradition in contemporary and choral programming. Together, they are set to expand Astra's cultural footprint across a spectrum of concert activities.
The result is the 2024 season - eight concerts with choir, instrumental ensembles, world music, early music, experimental and theatrical performance.
The musical melting pot - players from diverse musical cultures add their presence to Astra's tradition of choral worlds between old and new
Hear, and now! - eight premieres and five commissions of Australian work, performances of recent pieces by international composers.
Stories of our time - songs bitter and sweet of politics, history, identity, migration, environmentalism
The Astra Choir
The Astra Choir is the focus of four events:
Between Mall and Chapel (19 May)
Singing that moves through two locations for the Sleepless Footscray Festival. Nine centuries, from the mediaeval celebrity Hildegard of Bingen to new works from composers in Melbourne, Footscray and Geelong.
Friday the Thirteenth: Schoenberg Ives 150 (13 Sep)
A brief hour of musical parrying between two giants of the last century, whose mutual respect was deep. Choruses and song, piano and organ celebrate in small dimensions the large contrasting instincts of a remarkable pair of figures who changed the sound of a century.
Prison Job (6 October)
Texts and music of the interior and exterior in a new commissioned works by electronic composer Warren Burt and Steve Stelios Adam – choir with surround sound, further complemented by music from Claudio Monteverdi and Donald Martino.
Choral Forests (8 December)
Elaborations of Nature and the stories of its internal spirits are reflected in choral textures from Martin Friedel, Penelope Alexander and Max Reger to contemporary Romanians.
Music-making of diverse traditions
Performers from the classical world rub shoulders with the experimental, music of different ethnic traditions with early-music and electro-acoustic colours.
The Storytellers (2 November)
Iranian performers Vahideh Eisaei and Elnaz Sheshgelani with Issie Hart in a celebration of Persian storytelling through music, poetry, and shadow puppetry
Nothing is Real (9 November)
A program of movement, light and sound – the Beatles tripping over John Luther Adams and Alvin Lucier. With percussionist Alexander Meagher and pianist Liam Wooding.
String of Strings (10 November)
Kora. Koto. Gamba. Three worlds of string. Guinean (Mohamed Camara), Japanese, European (Laura Vaughan)
Australian composers
Astra continues to commission and perform works by Australian composers.
Between Mall and Chapel (19 May)
Commissioned works by three local composers: Geelong-based Kym Alexandra Dillon sets Emily Dickinson’s “I Dwell In Possibility” for unaccompanied choir; Footscray’s Troy Rainbow creates a soundscape for choir, pipe-organ and electronics; Allan Walker from Parkville meditates on the "Mare tranquillitatis", one of the Moon’s imaginary seas as seen from Earth, using solo baritone saxophone and choir.
Prison Job (6 October)
Two commissioned works with a political-historical focus, combining choir with electronics. Steve Stelios Adam’s texts by Greek political prisoner Elli Pappa (also the composer's great aunt) are joined by Warren Burt's new treatments of writings by the New Zealand poet and activist Rewi Alley.
Choral Forests (8 December)
Premieres of Penelope Alexander’s human polyphony from detailed transcription of Australian birdsong, and fragments from the late Martin Friedel's unfinished Arboreana, for choir with string ensemble and internal sounds and radio signals from trees.
A Global perspective
New international works continue to be an important strand of Astra's programming in 2024.
Julius Eastman: Gay Guerrilla (3 August)
US composer Julius Eastman’s ferocious and powerful music is heard for the first time by Melbourne audiences.
Nothing Is Real (9 November)
The premieres of 4000 Holes by US composer John Luther Adams and Silence Must Be by Belgian Thierry de Mey with Alvin Lucier’s Nothing Is Real.
Choral Forests (8 December)
With works by five Romanian composers: Tiberiu Olah, Pascal Bentoiu, Dan Dediu, Maia Ciobanu, Livia Teodorescu
