Choral

Music from 4 to 40 Parts

Angeli Vocal Ensemble, pianist Michael Kieran Harvey, chamber choir Ensemble Gombert and the Four Seasons String Quartet perform Melbourne composer Vaughan McAlley’s music. The programme explores writing from four parts up to forty, in his distinctive approach to counterpoint.

Bach Motets

The Australian Chamber Choir, directed by Douglas Lawrence, performs motets by J.S. Bach with works by Johann Michael Bach and Johann Christoph Bach.

Psalms

Psalms and chants from the Anglican and Taizé traditions, with two hymns, directed by Peter Chapman. Cantus Choro’s recording shows his love of Anglican psalmody, lively musicianship, and care for phrasing and words.

Laughing

The internationally acclaimed Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, turns to the lighter side of a cappella singing across jazz, madrigal and spiritual repertoire.

Sing Together Alleluia

Hymns sung by the Sing Alleluia Music Ministry Team, drawn from Sing Alleluia, appear in Together in Song: Australian Hymn Book II. The selection favours material not already on the earlier two-disc companion set.

The 12 Days of Christmas

The Choir of Ormond College sings carols long held in affection around the world, and pairs them with newer works, accompanied by renowned Australian pianist Stephen McIntyre.

Milerum's Basket

A 2002 portrait of Adelaide composer Becky Llewellyn across chamber, orchestral and choral forces, with the Adelaide Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, Adelaide Chamber Singers, soloists and a multimedia video of Berceuse.

The Choir of Ormond College Live

A live retrospective for the Choir of Ormond College’s twenty-first year, gathering concert recordings from 1985 to 2000 under Douglas Lawrence, from Britten’s Festival Te Deum and Fauré’s Requiem to Bach, Palestrina, Poulenc and lively encores.

Pablo

Melbourne a cappella sextet Pablo make their Move debut with pop, folk and spirituals. Close harmony takes in Billy Joel, The Beatles, sea shanties and gospel-tinged arrangements.

Prayer Dances

Recorded in the Concert Hall of the Faculty of Music, University of Newcastle, Christian Heim's debut Move disc presents Nicholas Routley directing the Sydney Chamber Choir and Sprung Percussion in the two sacred Prayer Dances and other premiere works.

Beatus Vir

Recorded live on their 1999 European tour, the Choir of Ormond College under Douglas Lawrence presents small-scale sacred works in up to eight parts by Palestrina, Gesualdo, Handl, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, Stanford and Rheinberger.

O Rose So Red

Melbourne-based Schola Cantorum, directed by Gary Ekkel, present chants, songs and motets that honour the Virgin Mary across more than a thousand years of sacred repertoire.

Kodály Missa Brevis

Recorded on their 1997 European tour in Northern Italy and Germany, the Choir of Ormond College sings Kodály’s Missa Brevis, with works by Tye, Howells and Bach.

Merry Christmas

Elizabeth Anderson and friends put a fresh twist on Christmas carols: eight tracks packaged as a Christmas card, with a vibrant cover and space for a personal inscription.

Music from Heaven

The Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, in a highly acclaimed programme of unaccompanied sacred works by Allegri, Byrd, Poulenc, Britten, Barber and J.S. Bach.

Hæc Dies

Easter at Notre Dame, Paris, c.1220. Music for Easter Sunday Mass as it may have been heard at Notre Dame early in the thirteenth century: chant propers, a complete ordinary cycle in two-part Leoninus-style settings, and three-part organum in the style of Perotin.

Songs and Praises

Favourite hymns from the Australian Hymn Book, Vol. 3. Choir and organ fill Trinity College Chapel, Melbourne, with the thrilling sound that hymn lovers know so well.

I Heard the Owl Call My Name

The highly acclaimed recording of the Choir of Ormond College's European tour. Includes the amazing choral soundscape I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Australian composer Philip Nunn.

There is an Island

A tuneful, dramatic cantata by Don Kay on Tasmania’s early colonial history and the fate of the full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal people, with Clive Sansom’s lyrics. Paired with George Dreyfus’s The Song of the Maypole.

I Can Tell The World

Saucy Purcell rounds, madrigals, drinking songs, spirituals and English folk settings from one of Australia's finest choirs, directed by Douglas Lawrence.

Bach Byrd Britten

The Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, presents Bach, Byrd and Britten. Bach’s motet Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden and Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices stand beside Britten’s Five Flower Songs and A Ceremony of Carols.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Choir of Ormond College, directed by Douglas Lawrence, presents a varied selection of twenty-eight Christmas carols. Familiar favourites sit beside Bach and Pachelbel organ pieces and twentieth-century settings.

The Spirit of the Lord

The Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, directed from the organ by June Nixon, presents sacred choral works by Edward Elgar and Edward Bairstow.

When David heard that Absalom was slain

The Choir of Ormond College specialised in liturgical music of the 16th and 20th centuries. This recording also includes psalm settings, among them Allegri’s Miserere, a setting of the penitential Psalm 51 once reserved for the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week.

Hymns For All Seasons

Sixteen further hymns from Cantus Choro, recorded in the grand acoustic of St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne. The programme opens with Advent and follows the great events of the Christian year, with Norman Kaye at the organ and the Melbourne Brass Ensemble.

The Choir of Ormond College Melbourne

Directed by Douglas Lawrence, who led chapel music at Ormond College, Melbourne, for more than twenty years, this recording presents the college choir in English church music of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.

O Come All Ye Faithful

A Melbourne choir under Faye Dumont, whose Christmas programme shows variety and finesse as part of its charter.

Carols of Many Nations

There is great variety in the ways people at different times and in different parts of the world spend Christmas. The more we know of Christmas, in former times and throughout the world, the better we can understand the Christmas message.

Ding Dong Merrily on High

A baker's dozen of well-loved traditional Christmas carols featuring children's and men's voices. Recorded in the magnificent acoustics of St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne.

Sing Out With Joy

Cantus Choro, directed by Peter Chapman, sings seventeen favourite hymns from the Australian Hymn Book. Norman Kaye’s imaginative organ accompaniments give the well-known settings fresh dramatic shape and room for the choir to breathe.

Psalms for Feasts and Seasons

Christopher Willcock’s twenty-two responsorial psalm settings cover the feasts and seasons of the church year, written for cantor, congregation and modest choral forces with organ, flute and guitar.

The Sound of Rosny

The Australian Rosny Children's Choir and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra present songs from other lands, Chinese and Australian repertoire, and cantata movements by Vaughan Williams and Don Kay.

Victoria Victoria

A double CD of Victoria’s 150th Gala Choral Concert, given in the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, in 1985. A thousand-voice choir and orchestra under Richard Divall frame Léon Caron’s prize-winning Victoria Cantata of 1880.

Seven Whole Days: Music for the Contemporary Church

Seven Whole Days is Jim Minchin’s second Move album of contemporary church song, recorded across Melbourne and Singapore in 1969 with singers and instrumentalists from both places.

Sing Round the Year

Donald Swann gathers eighteen carols and kindred songs of worship and praise, arguing that a carol need not be confined to Christmas. School choirs, organ and his own piano and voice share the programme.

Move Two Mix: Music for the Contemporary Church

Move Two Mix gathers religious songs and hymns with music by Jim Minchin, marrying familiar sacred texts to jazz- and folk-inflected settings. First issued in 1968, this pioneering Melbourne recording brought contemporary idioms into church worship.

Encores

Directed by Douglas Lawrence, the Australian Chamber Choir gathers favoured concert encores in a programme that shows the ensemble at its most immediate and engaging.

A Thousand Beautiful and Graceful Inventions

Subtitled ‘The glorious age of medieval and renaissance canons’, this programme of late Middle Ages and Early Modern choral music is sung by the University of Queensland Chamber Singers under Graeme Morton. The illustrated booklet has programme notes by Denis Collins and Jason Stoessel, with complete texts.

Gold

The Australian Chamber Choir, directed by Douglas Lawrence, performs works by eight Australian composers. From Gordon Kerry’s Shakespeare setting to Malcolm Williamson’s English Eccentrics, the programme turns individual voices into pure gold.

Keys to Heaven

The Australian Chamber Choir opens with the first recording of Agata della Pietà’s cantata Ecce nunc, written in eighteenth-century Venice by an orphan of the Ospedale della Pietà and reconstructed by Elizabeth Anderson. Sacred works by Palestrina and Allegri complete the programme.

A Baroque Christmas

The music on this CD is a historical Christmas “pick of the pops”, from the late 1400s to the end of the Baroque period. Directed by Douglas Lawrence, the Australian Chamber Choir offers a programme recorded live in concert during their 2019 European tour. The 17 tracks are drawn from lesser-known seasonal works, championing a sublime repertoire that is all too often neglected.

Luminescence

Light is integral to colour, and musical integrity is often described in terms of its colour or luminescence. Celebrating Canticum’s 21st birthday, the programme seeks composers whose music shows a particular sensitivity to the choral instrument and to beautiful text.

Josquin to Martin

A miscellany spanning High and Late Renaissance motets and nineteenth- and twentieth-century sacred works, drawn from Ensemble Gombert’s first European tour in 2004. The programme was chosen to complement Hommage à Gombert, then in production, with Gombert, Lassus and Monteverdi.

Bach Sacred Songs and Chorus

Melbourne choir Aspiration in Harmony, with soprano Bente Lancaster and director Andrew Blackburn, presents sacred songs and chorales from the Anna Magdalena Notebook and Schemelli’s hymn book.

Sing to the Lord, ye Heavenly Hosts

The Choir of The Scots' Church offers sacred music from sixteenth-century Palestrina to twenty-first-century Australian composer Andrew Batterham, crowned by a rare performance of Widor's Mass for choir, baritone choir and two organs.

Millennium Magic

Live from the Melbourne Concert Hall on St David's Day 2000, the Melbourne Welsh Male Voice Choir's first solo concert of the new millennium, with Linda O'Brien, Rhys Boak, Delyth Stafford and Lynlee Williams.

Tchaikovsky Concerto / Shostakovich Song of the Forests

The New Monash Orchestra under André de Quadros joins pianist Yuri Rozum, the Monash Women's Choir and Viva Voce in an all-Russian programme: Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto and Shostakovich's rarely heard Song of the Forests, his first major work for choir and orchestra.

Front cover art for The Litanies of St. Francis Xavier