Australia’s national vocal ensemble opens its red-blooded 2021 season with the first of its ‘Salon’ series of concerts featuring The Song Company’s outstanding Ensemble Artists.
The entertaining SALON program of Brahms’ energetic Liebeslieder Waltzes, and the touching Tonadillas en un Stile Antiguo by Enrique Granados, plays in Wollongong, Newcastle, Sydney & Canberra from 10 March.
Directed by legendary Australian soprano Taryn Fiebig and accompanied by The Song Company’s Artistic Director Antony Pitts and Associate Artistic Director Francis Greep, Dances of Passion features Principal Artist Roberta Diamond (soprano) together with Ensemble Artists Janine Harris (mezzo-soprano), Ethan Taylor (tenor) and Hayden Barrington (baritone).
INTO THE HEART is the theme for The Song Company’s broad and ambitious 2021 program of spectacular vocal music.
Including a program co-created by Indigenous composers and singers, Elizabeth Sheppard and Sonya Holowell, and inspired by the Uluru Statement “from the Heart”, the Company’s MAINSTAGE performances also trace Antony Pitts’s own literal, physical journey last year from Uluru – the heart of the continent – northwards to Kakadu and the Darwinian coast.
This was a deeply affecting spiritual journey into the heart, the fruit of which includes his 25-part a cappella motet called Transiens, which has already been recorded and will feature later in the year in the Burden of Truth tour in May/June.
Following that will come the MAINSTAGE tours Arms of Love and Songs from the Heart. Stay tuned for details!
The Song Company’s other projects include intimate CLOSE-UP concerts, ‘Fridays at the Wharf’ and their popular SongCo LAB workshops developing and showcasing emerging talent.
Artistic Director Antony Pitts said: “As we move into uncertain times ahead in 2021, some things become more certain and necessary than ever.
For those of us who live in Australia, engaging with the past and present experience of our First Nations hosts is the meaningful way forward into the future. My first season back in 2016 was called Into Something… which was a fragment of a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest where one ship-wrecked on a foreign shore undergoes a ‘sea-change into something rich and strange’ – I now have a better idea of where we should be heading: Into the Heart.”
The Song Company is Australia’s leading professional vocal ensemble
Unique in its stylistic diversity with repertoire spanning the 9th century to today, the Company brings together the country’s finest voices in innovative performances, artistic development, educational outreach and collaborative music-making across art forms.
Its long-standing and extensive commissioning program is also central to its ethos.
With a palette of outstanding Principal, Guest, Associate, and Ensemble Artists,
The Song Company is reshaping the professional vocal landscape in Australia for today and the next generation.
The Song Company presents Dances of Passion
Thurs 10 March 7pm – Wollongong | The Church on the Mall
Tues 16 March 7pm – Newcastle | Newcastle City Hall
Fri 19 March 7pm – Sydney | Cellblock Theatre, National Art School
Sat 20 March 7pm – Canberra | The Street Theatre
