Adelaide Chamber Singers bring on Rising Voices for Resound!
A recent initiative, the highly talented Rising Voices ensemble are Adelaide Chamber Singers’ next-generation choir. Its Christmas concert ‘Resound!’ was right up to the mark and a fitting conclusion to the year.
What better way to usher in the festive season than with some fine choral singing and a couple of sing-along carols? Lighting the pre-Christmas spirit in the finest form was Rising Voices ensemble, the Adelaide Chamber Singers’ newest initiative.
A word on who they are. Separate from the 17-member group whom this city has come to admire as the Adelaide Chamber Singers is the larger choir called Rising Voices. Also run by Christie Anderson, they serve as ACS’s next generation of vocal talent.
These mainly younger singers helped swell ACS to full strength in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Messiah earlier this month.
They are highly talented. Blink and you’d think that they were ACS themselves. That’s not so surprising. Anderson conducts them with the same care and finesse. Plus, a few core ACS singers found the time to join in this Christmas-themed program.
All the better to fill St Peter’s Cathedral’s vast acoustic and make it actually resound.
Varied pieces and interesting arrangements kept up the pace and interest in this concert. First came a bright, speedy version of “Ding! Dong! Merrily on High” by Mack. Director of the gargantuan Mormon Tabernacle Choir (now known as the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square), Wilberg has 360 singers at his disposal. Here, Anderson proved that 34 are enough. Bigger isn’t always better.
Threading their way through a host of smaller items were Bob Chilcott’s rather nice Advent Antiphons. Chilcott, a former member of the King’s Singers, knows instinctively how to compose for choir, and these proved to be gorgeous little pieces.
In the third one, ‘O Radix Jesse’, the sopranos rain down over a deep rumbling drone from the bass singers to vivid effect. A clever idea was to spread the sopranos down the central aisle and sides of the cathedral: positioning them like this worked wonderfully.
David Heah, the cathedral’s recently retired resident organist, gave two outstanding solo performances.
One was by Edward Bairstow, an English composer forever associated with St Peter’s Cathedral through one of his most distinguished pupils, the late David Swale, who himself was organist and choirmaster in Adelaide for many years.
In turn, Heah would be one of Swale’s last pupils, and to have him play one of Bairstow’s Short Preludes, “Veni Emmanuel”, with contemplative breadth was special. Literally pulling out the stops in Bach’s thunderously festive “In dulci jubilo”, BWV 729, he injected real magnificence into the program.
A pair of Christmas motets by Poulenc were amongst the best of the vocal items, but most memorable for its utter simplicity and the purest singing that Rising Voices delivered was Elizabeth Poston’s “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”.
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When Anderson urged all to rise and join in three well-worn Christmas carols, this concert began to feel unnervingly like a church service. But a good singalong is a healthy thing.
It was funny to see some wry smiles appear on the faces of Rising Voices as the audience croaked and wheezed their way through these carols.
What it needed was some sort of message about an Aussie-style Christmas, and this is exactly what we got thanks to Rachel Bruerville’s most excellent song, “Mistletoebird”. Direct, unpretentious and joyous, it also gave pause for reflection.
“Soon a new year dawns, and what have we learned? Have we cared for one another? What comes next?”, its words ask.
In this year of strife and uncertainty, its message could not have been more apposite.
One of ACS’s core members and a composer of rising national reputation, Bruerville received strong applause for this highlight of the concert.
The most adventurous piece, though, was Joseph Twists’ arrangement of “Silent Night”. Sliding around harmonically in all sorts of ways, it pushed this most recorded of all Christmas songs into the direction of jazz. Smoothly executed, it added another welcome colour.
ACS are an esteemed musical pillar of this city, and its Rising Voices choir is its newest star.
This is a review of ‘Resound!’ at St Peter’s Cathedral on 15 December. Look out for Adelaide Chamber Singers’ 2025 season, including their concert ‘Heal You’ at the Adelaide Festival on 13 March.