Andrew Ford

Composer, Writer & Broadcaster

Home / Compositions / Red Dirt Hymns

Red Dirt Hymns (2020–24)

approximately 80 minutes
for voices and instruments

Each of these twenty songs has words by a different Australian poet. Individual songs have different and variable instrumentation.

  1. 1. Gone (Jordie Albiston)
  2. 2. The New Summer (David McCooey)
  3. 3. Hymn of the Garden (John Kinsella)
  4. 4. dark cloud (Ellen van Neerven)
  5. 5. Isolation Hymn (Judith Bishop) *
  6. 6. Rain Hymn (Judith Beveridge)
  7. 7. What Desire Knows (Sarah Holland-Batt) +
  8. 8. Ultraviolet (Stephen Edgar) *
  9. 9. Our Mother's Heart (Kate Fagan)
  10. 10. Between Birds (Merlinda Bobis)
  11. 11. To Whom Do We Sing? (Mark Wakely)
  12. 12. Respair (Felicity Plunkett)
  13. 13. This Is to You (Philip Harvey)
  14. 14. The Shape of a Vase (Erik Jensen)
  15. 15. Stand and Weep (Jill Jones) #
  16. 16. Syreeni (Maria Takolander) ##
  17. 17. Looking for Corners (Melanie Horsnell)
  18. 18. Waiting for the Clouds (Martha Marlow)
  19. 19. My Octopus Teacher (Alison Flett) ##
  20. 20. 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

Individual songs have been sung by the likes of Gian Slater, Robyn Archer, Lotte Betts-Dean with Sean Shibe and Joseph Havlat, Jess Hitchcock, Jenny Duck-Chong with Halcyon, Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, Michelle Nicolle, Jenny M. Thomas with Bush Gothic, Thursday's Child with Evergreen Ensemble, the Chapel Choir of Glasgow University, the Young Artists of Opera Queensland, jazz students of Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, and Luminescence Chamber Singers

First performance of Red Dirt Hymns en masse by Luminescence Chamber Singers, Hilary Geddes (electric guitar), Freya Schack-Arnott (cello), directed by Roland Peelman, Canberra International Music Festival, Gandel Atrium, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2 May 2024

First complete performance of Red Dirt Hymns by Opera Queensland with vocal and instrumental students of the Jazz Program, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, music director Steve Newcomb, director Patrick Nolan, Opera Queensland Studio, Brisbane, 2 May 2026

‘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

‘This Is to You’ – live performance at 2024 Canberra International Music Festival by Luminescence Chamber Singers, Freya Schack-Arnott (cello), Hilary Geddes (electric guitar)

‘Stand and Weep’ – sung by Thursday’s Child, played by Evergreen Ensemble
‘Syreeni’ – Luminescence Chamber Singers

‘Waiting for the Clouds’ – live performance at 2024 Canberra International Music Festival by Luminescence Chamber Singers, Hilary Geddes (electric guitar), Freya Schack-Arnott (cello)

Red Dirt Hymns is a collection of secular hymns for voice or voices and flexible instrumentation. To commission an arrangement for a specific voice or voices or instrumental accompaniment, please contact the composer using the contact form.

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

Read more about the project from this 2020 article at the Australian Music Centre’s website.

And from this 2024 article in The Saturday Paper.

Reviews

Andrew Ford and Ellen van Neerven's "dark cloud" was as disquieting as it was beautiful.

John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald

"Syreeni" . . . was written specifically for Luminescence and was a perfect fit for the group – reminiscent of English folk tunes, telling its story of love and nature through richly blended harmony.

Pepe Newton, classikON

“This,” confided a friendly [Canberra International Music Festival] volunteer as I took my seat, “is going to be an absolute banger”.

She was not wrong. Luminescence Chamber Singers’ world-premiere performance of Andrew Ford’s new song cycle Red Dirt Hymns was one of the most purely enjoyable hours of music it’s been my pleasure to experience.

In 2020, much-loved Australian composer and broadcaster Ford commissioned several noteworthy Australian poets for lyrics “about the sorts of things that hymns are about – praise, awe, struggle, acceptance, love, hope and forgiveness; that the lyrics be strophic, with a strong sense of metre and the odd rhyme”. He has been repaid with diverse and rewarding texts celebrating all aspects of Australian life and nature, from poets such as Jordie Albiston and Ellen van Neerven.

The music Ford has composed for each is just as diverse and rewarding, responding to the style and spirit of each work, while maintaining the coherence of the theme throughout . . . A spare, pianissimo setting of Erik Jensen’s "The Shape of a Vase", beautifully performed by soprano Veronica Milroy, evoked John Cage, somehow magnifying every ambient sound . . . My favourite piece for the evening was Ford’s setting of "My Octopus Teacher" by Alison Flett, which started out a bit Beach Boys and wound up a bit Flanders & Swann/King’s Singers.

I’m not one for evangelism, but music has always been the best part of any religion, and in Red Dirt Hymns Ford has earned himself a new worshipper.

Sarah Byrne, Canberra City News