Red Dirt Hymns - Andrew Ford

Red Dirt Hymns (2020 -)

Voices and instruments

This is a work in progress. Each song has words by a different Australian poet. Individual songs have different and variable instrumentation.

Gone (Jordie Albiston)
The New Summer (David McCooey)
Hymn of the Garden (John Kinsella)
dark cloud (Ellen van Neerven)
Isolation Hymn (Judith Bishop) *
Rain Hymn (Judith Beveridge)
What Desire Knows (Sarah Holland-Batt) +
Ultraviolet (Stephen Edgar) *
Our Mother's Heart (Kate Fagan)
Between Birds (Merlinda Bobis)
To Whom Do We Sing? (Mark Wakely)
Respair (Felicity Plunkett)
This Is to You (Philip Harvey)
The Shape of a Vase (Erik Jensen)
Stand and Weep (Jill Jones) #
Syreeni (Maria Takolander) ##
Looking for Corners (Melanie Horsnell)
My Octopus Teacher (Alison Flett) ##
Waiting for the Clouds (Martha Marlow)
South Golden Beach (Lisa Brockwell)

* Commissioned by Kim Williams AM + Commissioned by Opera Queensland for its Young Artists Program # Commissioned by Evergreen Ensemble ## Commissioned by Luminescence Chamber Singers

‘Gone’ – arranged and sung by Gian Slater

‘dark cloud’ – sung by Lotte Betts-Dean

Hymn of the Garden – Halcyon (Jenny Duck-Chong and James Larsen)

Isolation Hymn – Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano), Joseph Havlat (piano)

‘What Desire Knows’ – Jenny M. Thomas (voice and piano), Dan Witton (bass)

‘Our Mother’s Heart’ – arranged and sung by Michelle Nicolle

‘Between Birds’ – sung by Lotte Betts-Dean

Red Dirt Hymns is an expanding sequence of secular hymns for voice or voices and flexible instrumentation. To commission a song in the series or have it fitted to a specific voice or arranged for certain instruments, please contact the composer using the contact form.

The song lyrics are being commissioned with financial assistance from the APRA AMCOS Sustainability Fund.

Read more about the project here: https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/red-dirt-hymns