About the Choir

Under the direction of Lyn Williams, Sydney Children’s Choir has built a worldwide reputation for choral excellence. The Sydney Children's Choir has commissioned over 60 works from leading Australian composers and performs a significant number of Australian compositions each year. In this way, the Choir seeks to introduce worldwide audiences to a distinctive Australian choral sound and to increase audience appreciation of children’s choirs as a compelling medium for making music.

The Choir travels frequently throughout the world performing its Australian choral repertoire to great acclaim from international audiences. In September 2007 it toured to Finland to participate in the international Sympatti Festival, to Estonia to collaborate with the Estonian Television Girls’ Choir and to Denmark to collaborate with the Danish National Girls’ Choir. In April of 2005 it was the featured artist for Australian National Day at the World Expo in Aichi Japan and has toured extensively throughout Australia and to Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, France and the United Kingdom.

In 2007 the Sydney Children’s Choir collaborated with the Nagoya Children’s Chorus in March in Sydney, and presented the world premiere of Heritage in Song, a critically acclaimed contemporary theatrical performance piece based around the stories and events in the lives of the current members of the Choir, their families and forebears, in May at the City Recital Hall Angel Place. They also performed at the APEC Leaders Week Cultural Performance at the Sydney Opera House and in Company B’s production of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie as part of the Sydney Festival.

        

The Sydney Children’s Choir’s performances in 2006 included the world premiere of Ross Edwards’ symphony The Promised Land with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House and a concert with the Danish National Girls’ Choir at the Verbrugghen Hall. The Choir also performed on the soundtrack to the Academy Award winning film Happy Feet. In 2005, the Sydney Children’s Choir also performed with the Sydney Symphony in Symphony of Angels as well as in Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. During 2004, the Choir performed Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings Symphony and William Walton’s Henry V, both with the Sydney Symphony and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and gave performances at the Let’s Sing Festival in Hobart and at the National Choralfest in Adelaide. Other recent performances by the Sydney Children's Choir include the Closing Ceremony of the 2003 Rugby World Cup, Symphony of Angels with the Sydney Symphony, Carmina Burana with the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, a concert in honour of his Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Sydney Opera House, the Dawn Ceremony performance on the sails of the Opera House as part of an international telecast, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at the Sydney SuperDome to open the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival and the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games.

In 2008 the Sydney Children’s Choir has presented joint performances with the Young Voices of Melbourne and the St Louis Children’s Choir and performed with the Sydney Chamber Choir conducted by Richard Gill. In July, the Choir gave world premiere of a new work by Dan Walker at the World Shakuhachi Festival, performed at the arrival of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI as part of World Youth Day and gave a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No.3 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. In September the Choir will travel to Thursday Island for workshops and performances as part of their two year collaboration with Torres Strait Island communities. In November the Choir’s most recent CD Voices of Angels will be released on the ABC Classics label.