... St Monica's Church Moonee Ponds...Photograph: St Monica's Church Moonee Ponds...One of Melbourne most impressive neo-gothic spaces, the enormous sandstone church of St Monica in Mount Alexander Road, Moonee Ponds, provided a host of spatial possibilities for voices moving through the building in changing configurations...Listen to Excerpt 1: Anonymous Spanish Pilgrim Song, Mariam Matrem (14th C.)
From the concert at St Monica’s Church, Moonee Ponds on Sunday 18 December, 1992.
The Astra Choir conducted by John McCaughey.
For 30 years, the concerts of Astra Chamber ...
Music always interacts with the architecture in which it is heard.
Melbourne has some wonderful acoustic environments. Often, these spaces were built for other purposes – for example the splendid public and ecclesiastical buildings from the first 100 years of the city’s history, and more recent industrial constructions.
Exploiting ‘non-customized’ spaces for musical performance celebrates and explores our architectural heritage.
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.
In this story take a tour of some of Melbourne’s intimate, hidden spaces and listen to the music that has filled their walls.
For further information about Astra Chamber Music Society click here.
