... instruments... on the Victorian Heritage Register.
In 2010, the hall was the venue for a performance of Cities of the Mind, Martin Friedel’s extended cantata on the history of the mind and its science. In this performance constant changes of singer and instruments were used...Listen to Excerpt 1: Giovanni Gabrieli, Blow The Trumpet In The New Moon (ca 1600), four choirs of voices and brass instruments, and Excerpt 2: Keith Humble, excerpt from: The Seasons (1971), seven haiku settings for four choirs
From the concert ...
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.
