We feel tremendously privileged to have just completed the ACC’s eighth concert tour of Europe. We were proud to represent Australia’s lively choral scene on the international stage. Our international concert tours have been a formative experience for many of our young singers. After a tour, it’s common for a few of our singers to remain in Europe for auditions. Douglas and Elizabeth take great pleasure in following the international careers of singers like Amelia Jones, Erika Tandiono and Jacob Lawrence, who honed their skills in the Australian Chamber Choir before successfully auditioning for ensembles such as Vox Luminis, La Cetra, Huelgas Ensemble, Miroir de Musique, Profeti della Quinta, Chorus Musicus Köln & das Kleine Konzert and the Fitzhardinge Consort.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
The Committee of Management of the ACC has often discussed the possibility of sharing our story with a wider audience by making a documentary of one of our European concert tours. This last concert tour was more than just the story of the ACC and the talented singers who travel with us. On this tour, we introduced a European audience to a composer whose music has never been heard there in public, even though she’s 300 years old. Yes, the story of Agatha della Pietà is a coals-to-Newcastle story: As Tony Way reported in The Age, “Australian harpsichordist, singer and musicologist, Elizabeth Anderson has brought to life the accomplished work of an abandoned handicapped girl from eighteenth century Venice”. In his review of the work’s world premiere, he commented “The Australian Chamber Choir has revealed a composer who combined technical rigour with expressive warmth”. Since then, the ACC has presented Agatha’s Cantata in nine Australian performances. Now we’ve taken Agatha back to her home town and gifted a performance showcasing her rediscovered talent to the Venetian concert-going public. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to combine Agatha’s story with the story of the Australian Chamber Choir. Accordingly, the Committee decided that a documentary of this tour must be made. We enlisted experts in the field to make sure that this extraordinary story is captured for all music lovers to enjoy.
Catherine Hunter is an award-winning producer of arts documentaries. You might have seen her work on the ABC: The Cobar Sound Chapel; Bronwyn Oliver – The Shadows Within and Jeffrey Smart, to name a few. After two decades of documenting the arts for the Nine network’s Sunday program (where she made stories on international tours by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony), she left to work as a freelance documentary maker. Catherine believes that “art and artists are not somehow apart from the world. On the contrary, artists are deeply and crucially engaged in shaping our sense of place, identity and what it is to be human”. Her documentaries authenticate that belief.
Bruce Inglis, cinematographer and editor, travelled with us for seven days in Europe. Inglis and Hunter have collaborated on many arts documentaries including Glenn Murcutt: Spirit of Place, Mask and Memory: Sidney Nolan and Quilty: Painting the Shadows. He also travelled to the United States with Hunter following the Sydney Symphony to Boston and New York. After leaving the Nine Network’s Sunday program, he worked with the Sydney Opera House filming a series of short films on visiting musicians.
CESMA is a school of audio and video engineering, situated in Lugano, Switzerland. Professors from the school assisted us with film and audio, both for our Venice concert and for a concert in Lugano, which was presented by Ceresio Estate, one of the major European Summer music festivals.
This is the most ambitious project in the history of the ACC. We aim to air the documentary with an Australian broadcaster and at national and international film festivals, thus taking our objects, of ‘promoting choral music through performances of the choir’ to a whole new level. Broadcast quality film is very expensive. When making a documentary, backing from broadcasters and funding bodies is only expected to cover a fraction of the costs. Nevertheless, as we believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it must be seized and we have committed to making the very best record we can of this exciting story and of the choir itself. While having the documentary broadcast is the ultimate goal, even if in the unlikely event that a broadcaster does not take it up, it will still feature on the Australian Digital Concert Hall and later on YouTube etc. and will be made available internationally to schools and universities, along with a study guide.
from dream to reality
To make this dream a reality, we have already raised $90,000 towards production and post-production costs, so that people everywhere can learn about Agatha and enjoy her life-affirming story. We are profoundly grateful to those donors who have already contributed. It now remains for us to raise the final $15,000.
The ACC’s Chairman, Bruce Fethers encapsulates how the documentary will look: ‘The story will include Elizabeth’s discovery of the manuscripts, her reconstruction of Agatha’s Cantata and the ACC’s performances, all a part of the outstanding story of the Australian Chamber Choir and its Artistic Director, Douglas Lawrence’.
The Australian Chamber Choir has been working hard to support young professional singers and entertain audiences with high quality classical music for the last 17 years, and during that time, thanks to your support, we have realised many of our dreams. Agatha, born in 1712 dreamed of success as a singer and teacher. In her time, it would have been audacious to dream of success in the all-male world of musical composition. But today we live in a different reality. Agatha’s story has remained untold for the last 300 years and we now have the opportunity to tell this story and realise her wildest dreams.
Please join us in making this dream a reality. Your donation will make a difference!
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