Four North Melbourne buildings were utilised for a roving concert in February 1986 (the first of several roving concerts by the Astra Chamber Music Society). The audience walked from one performance location to another, each stage of the program designed for the character of four heritage buildings - the Meat Market Craft Centre, St Mary’s Anglican Church, St Mary Star Of The Sea Church and the North Melbourne Town Hall. No audio is available for this concert.

Two decades later the Meat Market was to be more officially discovered as a space for performance, subdivided into two areas, and established as a location for non-conventional showings and productions.

The venues, including St Mary's Anglican Church, North Melbourne Town Hall, the Former Metropolitan Meat Market, and St Mary Star of the Sea, are of historical and architectural significance to the State of Victoria. For more information visit the Victorian Heritage Database.

For 30 years, the concerts of Astra Chamber Music Society have ranged around Melbourne’s architectural environment. Each concert has had a site-specific design that takes advantage of the marvellous visual qualities, spatial possibilities, and acoustic personality of each building. The music, in turn, contributes a new quality to the perception of the buildings, now experienced by audiences as a sounding space - an area where cultural issues from music’s history are traversed, and new ideas in Australian composition are explored.