Music review: Adelaide Chamber Singers 40th anniversary
A standard-bearer of excellence for four decades, Adelaide Chamber Singers, put on a magnificent anniversary concert that included not one, but two, 40-part motets.
One only had to see the bulging audience St Peter’s Cathedral and sample the celebratory atmosphere to realise how significant Adelaide Chamber Singers has become for Adelaide during its forty years.
The thing is, no choir in Australia has made anywhere near its impact. Its influence has been strong enough to spawn similar vocal ensembles around the country, and from their example a wave of new energy has generated in the fine art of choral singing.
This anniversary Celebrate You concert was distinct on many fronts, not least of which were chat sessions beforehand and at interval. The first was between Christie Anderson, the choir’s artistic director since 2022, and two of its current members, soprano Brooke Window and tenor Martin Penhale – the latter in his final appearance with ACS after many years as a core singer. We learned how deeply they care about the group and the music they sing. Some emotion flowed.
Most interesting was another chat midway with the man who started it all, founding artistic director Carl Crossin. Interviewed by David Washington, memories stretched all the way back to when Crossin put on ACS’s first concert in Edmund Wright House in 1985. With just nine singers, Crossin said his aim at the time was to assemble a small group of trained singers who could take on more difficult repertoire than usual choirs were used to doing.
“My basic vision was for a top-notch group of singers who could tackle anything I could throw at them,” Crossin recounted. Meshed in with this was an ethos in which relationships would be built – between singers, with the conductor, and with the music.
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Anderson and Crossin shared the conducting in this magnificent celebratory concert, and fittingly, the singers’ ranks were massively augmented. In addition to ACS’s 18 current members, there were various alumni, guests, and 16 younger singers who make up Rising Voices – Anderson’s training ground for budding vocal talent. They were duly dubbed the ‘ACS 40th Anniversary Choir’.
Two ‘Jubilate Domino’ works, by Giovanni Gabrieli and Joseph Twist, lit up the first half in fine style. Something that one immediately notices about ACS is how they intimately connect with the words and spirit of the music, and such was the case here with lines from Psalm 100: their singing was exuberant and joyous. Twist’s jazzy swing was terrific.
Two other contemporary composers ACS sing well are Eric Whitacre and, most especially, Arvo Pärt. Two of their loveliest pieces were present. Whitacre’s ‘Lux Aurumque’ carries his hallmark style of spreading harmonies and expanded dynamics, and its solo for soprano was beautifully sung by Emma Borgas.
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Contrastingly, Pärt’s ‘Magnificat’ is deeply introspective and marked by an utter simplicity in which dissonances are left hanging and silences bring a reflective stillness. ACS has performed virtually all of this much-admired Estonian composer’s music over the years, and has a special affinity with it. With the cleanest vocal tone and unwavering focus, this was one to savour.
One of the most significant contributions ACS has made is commissioning and supporting composers of new choral music. Anne Cawrse’s song cycle ‘All Flesh is Fire’ is one of the notable works it has premiered in recent years: they performed this song cycle at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2024, and Cawrse went on to win an Australian Art Award for it. She sets English words so extremely well, and the charming song ‘White Pearls’ from this cycle was wonderful to hear again.
Another composer ACS has been championing of late happens to be one of their altos, Rachel Bruerville. Her piece ‘Locus Iste’ is about recognising and valuing home in a physical and psychological sense; and its pairing up of different combinations of voices reflected that idea in an immediate way. Bruerville is similarly well skilled at text-setting, here drawing Latin words from the Book of Genesis.
Only rarely do choirs choose to perform Thomas Tallis’s 40-part motet, ‘Spem in Alium’. Not only does is require a lot of singers, but each is essentially on their own in a complex texture consisting of five sub-choirs. ACS has performed this work several times now, but never before quite as spectacularly as this: with the singers spread out around the cathedral’s nave, the sound floated magically from all directions.
For more than 400 years, Tallis’s grand conception has remained one of a kind – until now. For this concert, Crossin had composed a companion work, ‘Vivemus Cantare’ (We love to sing), also in 40 parts, and it proved a most vibrantly joyful piece, full of rhythmic verve. Some moments are restrained and recall Tallis, much else about it is freely modern. In many places, Crossin adds light percussion in the form of tambourines, claves (wooden sticks) and hand-clapping.
Interestingly, he has also written his own Latin text for this piece, incorporating lines of poetry from Walt Whitman and James Weldon Johnson, all with the idea of celebrating ACS’s fortieth anniversary.
With the sound emanating from all sides of the cathedral just as it did in the Tallis, this was an uplifting finale.
There are several reasons why ACS has cemented its place as Australia’s most successful vocal ensemble, and primarily they come down to the great care this ensemble shows in its programming and their unerring artistic excellence. You see it in their faces: these honed singers wear a smile for the love of what they do, and for the audience it all adds up to a generous gift.
Long may they continue.
Adelaide Chamber Singers performed Celebrate You at St Peter’s Cathedral on October 25