Recent News and Events

Handel's "Messiah"
Patron News
Joan Carden Award 2008
"Choir of the Year" Finalists
Haydn's "The Creation"
Impassioned Puccini
Mozart's "Messiah"
Joan Carden's University performance

On Sunday 2 December the massed choir, in The Sydney Town Hall and under the baton of the Music Director of the Sydney University Graduate Choir, Christopher Bowen, announced the arrival of the festive season with an enthusiastic and musically accomplished performance of Handel’s Messiah. A guest choir of some 400 choristers joined the 100-odd Grads singers in the musically significant, handsome space of the Town Hall, which over the years would have been the venue for hundreds of performances of Handel’s wonderful oratorio. The event was very enjoyable for the singers and the audience of some 1000.

The guest choir was made up substantially of current members of choirs, mostly from Sydney although with a good representation from the bush and the NSW regions– Warren, Albury, Newcastle, Wollongong, for example. They clearly had a good grasp of the work and showed no signs of requiring more than the allocated half-day’s rehearsal on the concert day.

Christopher Bowen commented that the guest choir should feel very proud of their performance: “they were really impressive and a delight to work with. It was a remarkable experience to hear a soprano section of over 150 and an alto section of 175-plus singing so accurately and musically, semi-quavers and all. The event showed that the massed choir approach to performing Messiah is still valid, albeit unfashionable.”

Up until about 30 years ago, it was customary to perform Messiah with very large forces. Well within living memory, the Hurlstone Choral Society, for many years the flagship choir in Sydney, used to give annual, grand scale performances of Handel’s masterpiece. More recently, however, the fashion for ‘authenticity’ in early music performance has led to smaller, more elitist performances. The massed choir approach has the effect of returning this great, popular work to the people and the performance on 2 December was a significant example.

The Grads maintained their policy of giving opportunities to young soloists, with outstanding Conservatorium students, Simone Easthope (soprano) and Victoria Wallace (mezzo) joining Robert Boyd (tenor) and Timothy Collins (bass) to form an excellent solo quartet, whose contribution was appreciated by audience and choristers alike. Violinist Teri Singer led the fine orchestra, in which Sydney’s ‘Mr Bassoon’, John Cran, played for the second time. Adam Malone gave a splendid rendition of the trumpet solo in ‘The Trumpet shall Sound’. Robert Ampt, the Sydney City Organist, was unfortunately indisposed and unable to give the scheduled organ recital before the singing but we were delighted that his wife, Amy Johansen, the Sydney University organist, joined the orchestra again to play the continuo part.

Catherine Crittenden, the President of Grads, commented that it had been a great experience and pleasure for the Choir to collaborate with so many other choristers and expressed her appreciation to them and to the City of Sydney and Mitsubishi Motors, who were our very supportive partners in staging Messiah.

Since 2002 the Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO, has honoured the Choir by agreeing to become our patron.

On 2 July Professor Bashir was officially welcomed as the University's seventeenth Chancellor at a ceremony in the Great Hall at which the Choir was delighted to participate by presenting two musical items.

At the final concert of its 2007 season the Graduate Choir was very proud to award Professor Bashir Life Membership of the Choir.

The Choir is honoured and very grateful that the great Australian soprano, Joan Carden AO OBE, has lent her name and support to a new award offered annually by the Choir to an outstanding singing student of the University of Sydney.

The Award, sponsored by the Sydney University Graduate Choir, is now in its fourth year. The award was established in 2004 to

• identify and encourage young singing talent
• strengthen the Choir's relationship with the University of Sydney and the Sydney music community, and
• honour the contribution of Joan Carden to music in Australia.

The auditions for 2008 were held on 7 April, with outstanding pianist David Miller AM as associate artist. From a very strong field, fine young soprano, Jinhee Uhm, emerged as the winner. Born in Seoul, Korea, Jinhee Uhm, (pictured with Joan Carden), studied as an undergraduate in Seoul as a pianist, and in the last three years as a singer. In that time she has already had some success in international competitions, and has performed the role of Pamina in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. In 2008 she took up a scholarship in the Masters in Music (Opera) program at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she studies with Dr Rowena Cowley. IN September this year, she will sing the role of Adele in Die Fledermaus of Johann Strauss Junior in a Conservatorium Opera School production.

Jinhee joins a distinguished list of previous winners: Lucinda-Mirikata Deacon (soprano, 2005), Jae-Hyeok Lee (baritone, 2006)and Victoria Wallace (mezzo-soprano, 2007). These artists and others, singled out for encouragement by the adjudication panel, are making good progress in their performing careers. It is encouraging to be able to say that the Award has already substantially justified the Choir’s hopes in sponsoring it by giving an impetus to the careers of a number of talented young singers, who have contributed to the success of the choir’s concerts and benefitted from the experience offered to them. We are indebted to Joan Carden for her continued enthusiastic involvement and not least for her generosity in giving beautiful performances of her own at some of our concerts, and to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for its work in organising the auditions.

The SUGC Chamber Choir successfully made it through this elite competition to become one of the NSW state finalists.

Competition was fierce and fascinating; sadly the Choir did not win on the night, however benefited greatly from the experience. Warmest thanks to our musical director, Christopher Bowen, for his strong support and encouragement, not to mention untold additional rehearsal hours!

For the winter concert in its Great Hall series, the Sydney University Graduate Choir and orchestra, conducted by Music Director Christopher Bowen, gave two performances of Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation). The unusual experience of doing two performances in rapid succession, and the opportunity of more than usual rehearsal with and for the orchestra, made possible by a generous benefactor, facilitated the achievement of rousing performances and justice was done to Haydn’s uplifting music.

A major contribution to the success of the performances was made by three fine young soloists, Bernadette Fisher (soprano), Stuart Haycock (tenor) and Andrew Finden (baritone, who appeared by virtue of his special commendation in the 2007 Joan Carden Award). The orchestra played with distinction and was joined on this occasion by John Cran, the distinguished former principal bassoonist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

The performances were received enthusiastically by the Great Hall audiences, which on Sunday included our Patron, Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO, Governor of New South Wales and Chancellor of the University, renowned soprano Joan Carden AO OBE, Sir William Tyree OBE, and the German Consul General, Dr Gruber, and Mrs Gruber.

Joan Carden commented that the performance benefitted from being performed in German, informing us that she had sung the soprano role several times but always in English. She believed that it was to the choir’s credit to have performed it in the original language.

The handsome, grand space of the University’s Great Hall resounded to the sweeping, passionate music of Puccini during the concert on Saturday night, 12 May, given by the Sydney University Graduate Choir and orchestra, conducted by Music Director, Christopher Bowen.

In the Finale to Act One of Tosca, the imagination of the audience was transported to the Church of San Andrea della Valle in Rome; young baritone, Jae-Hyeok Lee sang the role of the security police chief, Scarpia, as he mused amorously on the diva, Tosca, and sadistically on her lover, the political dissident, Cavaradossi, until interrupted by the Choir’s dramatic Te Deum, accompanied by the mighty organ, played by University organist, Amy Johansen.

The scene swung to Florence at the end of the thirteenth century and Nagasaki at the end of the nineteenth for the two solos by great soprano, Joan Carden AO OBE, O Mio Babbino Caro from Gianni Schicchi and Un Bel Di, Vedremo from Madama Butterfly. Joan Carden’s association with the Choir over the past few years has uplifted and inspired us and, once again, she moved and thrilled the audience, which included former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, with her artistry and beautiful voice, which are unbeatable in this repertoire.

The program for the first half of the concert also included two orchestral works by the great Italian composer: Chrisantemi, for string orchestra, and the Preludio Sinfonico, which we believe may have been receiving its Australian premiere. These works were beautifully performed by the players, reflecting, as did the whole concert, the dedication and expert guidance of Christopher Bowen.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Puccini’s early, masterly and insufficiently known Messa di Gloria. It was a delight for the Choir to be joined for this performance by the young soloists from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Lorenzo Rositano (tenor) and Jae –Hyeok Lee (baritone), winner of the 2006 Joan Carden Award which is sponsored by the Choir. Their contribution helped to create a performance which deeply satisfied performers and audience alike and underlined once again the value in the Choir’s policy of seeking to give opportunities to younger singers.

Overall, this concert, somewhat different from and more ambitious than our usual offerings, was one of the Choir’s most successful undertakings.

On Saturday 9 December, in its final Great Hall concert for 2006, Christopher Bowen led the Sydney University Graduate Choir and Orchestra, augmented by the guest George Faunce Allman Chorale, in a performance of Mozart’s edition (K.572) of Handel’s Messiah. The soloists were Simone Easthope, Virginia Marie Stack, Robert Boyd and Timothy Collins.

The performance was very warmly received by a full house, including Dame Leonie Kramer, the former Chancellor, and Professor Judith Kinnear,the former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, who has been a long-standing supporter of the Choir, and had specially come from New Zealand, where she is Vice-Chancellor of Massey University, to attend the concert.

Mozart’s hand was immediately apparent in the contribution of the French horns in the Overture (a solo French horn later replaced Handel’s trumpet to accompany Timothy Collins in ‘The Trumpet Shall Sound’). It was also fascinating to hear the way Mozart gives the classical wind band a major role in the ‘Pastoral Symphony’. Mozart uses the clarinets to add emotional colour in particularly moving or dramatic moments, such as ‘The People who Walked in Darkness’ and ‘He was Despised’. We were very fortunate to have Deborah de Graaff’s fine clarinet artistry for these passages.

Mozart’s version of Handel’s wonderful work had not been done in Sydney for neaarly 20 years and this performance enabled the Choir to make a further contribution to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of his birth. It was a very worthwhile and interesting experience for performers and audience alike.

Joan Carden turned back the years on Sunday afternoon, 20 August, 2006 in the Great Hall, with an inspiring performance of Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate. The performance was a highlight of the Sydney University Graduate Choir’s concert celebrating the 250th anniversary of the great composer’s birth and was received with enthusiastic acclaim by the capacity audience, which included the Governor of New South Wales, Prof. Marie Bashir AC,who is the Choir’s Patron, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Gavin Brown AO and Mrs Brown and Professor Kim Walker, Dean of the Conservatorium of Sydney.

Baritone Jae-Hyeok Lee, winner of the Joan Carden Award for 2006, made a fine impression in arias from The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi Fan Tutte, while Richard Anderson of Opera Australia filled the beautiful space of the Great Hall with the power of his basso profundo voice in ‘O Isis and Osiris’ from The Magic Flute and the Tuba Mirum from the famous unfinished Requiem, the last work in Mozart’s catalogue. He was joined by Amanda Moxham (soprano), Virginia-Marie Stack (mezzo) and Stuart Haycock (tenor) as soloists in the Requiem, which made up the second half of the program.

The concert also included the four-part a capella hymn, ‘God is our Refuge’, written by Mozart at the age of nine in London in English and sung by the Chamber Choir.