A hymnal to the country under our feet.

In a Canberra International Music Festival exclusive, the world premiere of Andrew Ford’s RED DIRT HYMNS resounds in the great cathedral of Australian stories: the National Museum of Australia. A living songbook more than four years in the making, Andrew Ford’s hymnal brings together the words of sixteen contemporary Australian writers – poets, essayists and folksingers – in songs of praise, awe, grief, hope, joy, and natural splendour, dedicated not to a god, but to the land.

The ever-daring voices of Luminescence Chamber Singers join forces with two rising stars: Hilary Geddes, 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow and lead guitarist of Triple J favourites The Buoys, and category-defying cellist Freya Schack-Arnott.  Red Dirt Hymns unfolds to the evocative imagery of Sammy Hawker, whose art is created within the fabric of country itself: saltwater, limestone and eucalypt.  

From Ellen van Neerven’s dark clouds to John Kinsella’s abundant gardens, RED DIRT HYMNS does what a hymnal is meant to do: it draws us closer – to each other, and to the light and shade of our wide brown land.

“Everyone’s red dirt under the clouds.” – Philip Harvey