Enough of you enjoyed last week’s post on my choir boy past that I’ve now served up part two.

This time, I’ve gone for pieces that are quite different musically, but there’s another key difference…these are both much much longer.  So make sure you’ve got time to appreciate them, or can put them on nice and loud as background music for 15 minutes or so. Freak out your neighbours with the 2nd one especially.

While you’re listening, you should also go and have a look at my elder sister’s blog, CeeLew, who once again was a soprano in these choirs, while my non-blogging, non-Twittering, non-Facebooking younger sister, Lis (Liz, but since her name is Elisabeth, her Liz is Lis…ok?) was an alto.  I was a tenor.  And I am these days as well, though I’ve worked a lot on increasing my baritone range as well.

First up, our school choir : St Peters Chorale.  It’s still a world class choir, even without all of us.  I know, hard to imagine isn’t it??  It must be the Graeme Morton factor, as most everything he touches turns to gold when it comes to choral music.

(Had I mentioned we went to boarding school, btw?)

Anyway, Past Life Melodies by Sarah Hopkins is a great example of haunting simplicity, and features some wonderful harmonic singing.  If you’re short on time, fast forward through to around the 4:30 mark, by which time the drone has been set up and the harmonics are starting to bounce over the top as two of the guys trade harmonic lines.  I will admit I was always a little disappointed with the title of this piece (and not just because of my faith), as I think it is far more evocative of the Australian outback than it is of past lives.  What do you think?

Next we head back to The Australian Voices who featured in the last post.  This is the final movement of the title track of our first album, Great Southern Spirits.  Uluru is the indigenous name of Ayers Rock, that amazing centre-piece to our nation.  Diane and I have been there 3 times, and I can’t get enough of the place.  Truly amazing, and I think this song reflects the diversity of the environment quite well – but bizarrely you can hear me very clearly throughout.  There were 15 other guys in this choir, so I’m not sure why my voice is so prominent; I know I can project well…so that must be it…

This piece was considered key in the album winning the Sunnie Award for Best Classical Album in 1994. The lyric is based on poetry by Michael Doneman, while the music is by Stephen Leek, who was also our school’s composer in residence for a period of time. You don’t realise how cool that is until after the fact. Like a lot of things in life I guess.

Enjoy the outback … “they capture the moment on film”