RED

DIRT

HYMNS

“one of the most purely enjoyable hours of music it’s been my pleasure to experience.” Canberra CityNews, May 2024

Past Performances

Thursday 2 May 2024 | National Museum of Australia
Presented by Canberra International Music Festival

Sunday 9 November 2025 | Orange Civic Theatre
Presented by Orange Civic Theatre, featuring singers from Orange Regional Conservatorium

Thursday 13 November 2025 | Joan Sutherland Theatre Performing Arts Centre, Penrith
Featuring singers from The Penrith Conservatorium Choirs

Friday 14 November 2025 | Bowral Memorial Hall
Featuring singers from Moss Vale High School Choirs

Sunday 16 November 2025 | Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre
In partnership with The Q, Luminescence Children’s Choir, and Music For Canberra.

Sunday 23 November 2025 | Four Winds, Bermagui
Presented by Four Winds, Bermagui

A hymnal to the country under our feet.

Born in a time of fire and darkness, grief, and loss, and then fragile, tender hope, the Red Dirt Hymns are songs of awe and praise, dedicated not to a god, but to the land.

Performed by the ever-daring voices of Luminescence Chamber Singers alongside two rising stars: Harley Coleman (electric guitar), category-defying cellist Freya Schack-Arnott, Red Dirt Hymns is a living songbook that spans art music, folk song, country ballad, and Aussie rock. Words by sixteen contemporary Australian writers (poets, essayists, and folksingers) unfold 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.

70 minutes no interval; 6 amplified singers; amplified cello; electric guitar; and projection. Optional community choir workshops + participation in the performance.

PROGRAMME

Respair (text: Felicity Plunkett)
My Octopus Teacher (text: Alison Flett)
Waiting for Clouds (text: Martha Marlow)
Dark Cloud (text: Ellen van Neerven)
Isolation Hymn (text: Judith Bishop)
Hymn of the Garden (text: John Kinsella)
Stand and Weep (text: Jill Jones)
The Shape of a Vase (text: Erik Jensen)
Between Birds (text: Merlinda Bobis)
Syreeni (text: Maria Takolander)
Gone (text: Jodie Albiston)
What Desire Knows (text: Sarah Holland-Batt)
Looking for Corners (text: Melanie Horsnell)
Our Mother’s Heart (text: Kate Fagan)
To Whom Do We Sing (text: Mark Wakely)
This is to You (text: Philip Harvey)

1 hour, no interval

Developed in collaboration with Roland Peelman, AM

Red Dirt Hymns is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW. This project has also been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Red Dirt Hymns was premiered at the 2024 Canberra International Music Festival, at the National Museum of Australia, and was awarded a 2024 Canberra Critics Award.

  • AJ America

    mezzo soprano

  • Josephine Brereton

    soprano

  • Harley Coleman

    electric guitar

  • Lucien Fischer

    baritone

  • Andrew Ford

    composer

  • Rachel Mink

    soprano

  • Roland Peelman

    arranger and musical director

  • Freya Schack-Arnott

    cello

  • Alasdair Stretch

    bass

  • Dan Walker

    tenor

Sammy Hawker: Vibrant Matter

Red Dirt Hymns unfolds to the evocative images of artist Sammy Hawker, whose work is driven by an interest in the immaterial and material presences within sites, spaces and the body.   

Her chromatograms artworks are a co-creation between local trees, their stories, and the humans that listen to them. The process of chromatography facilitates the visual expression of vibrant matter. The hues and patterns that form cannot be controlled by the artist and the result can be understood as a self-portrait of the tree.

Hawker’s chromatograms are set in a slowly evolving video, featuring 64 chromatograms from Australian trees.