 So it is my lovelies, that we come to my beloved Sossies!
I say “my” possessively, but in reality they are OUR beloved Sossies, Sue Webster’s and mine. (SOS was originally Sounds of Southgate, where we were based, but rebranded Sounds of Singing when we moved to Wesley, post Covid) Gorgeous Girls and how that all that panned out in the end was again stressful! (Yes, there is a pattern here……) But because Sue was on the touch line of that through her involvement of bringing that special album into the world, she was also there to declare, “before you say it, you’re not done yet……your next choir needs to operate 21st Century style and you need to be able to focus on the music.” And so it was that she enticed me back on the horse again, but with her driving the managerial/PR side of things. Match made in heaven! The other big difference was that it was to be an adult choir. I’d never had one of ‘em before! I loved my youth choirs, but there’s no question that things had become cumbersome as we, all of us, got bogged down in the post 2000 era of terrifying technology and with litigation breathing down our necks! At least with adults we were able to create our own policies and protocols and Sue came up with a streamlined version of the nuts and bolts “show within the show,” as it were. We were very small to begin with. I even had to get Astra mates in to lend their voices in our early seasons. I decided that this choir, community choir though it was clear we were, would be ALL about the music! I was so uncaring that I didn’t even give the Sossies a tea-break, preferring to hold 7/11, a short solo workshop at 7pm for 11 minutes, to give their voices a rest, yet keeping them on task with the singing thing, and at the same time give budding soloists a bit of extra performance practice. And our early start and therefore early finish, meant that we were user friendly for workers and families. That Sossies increasingly chose to go to the pub was not my affair……🤣 So, the sense of community grew despite me and of course, it IS the case that the very act of singing together creates, well, togetherness! I used to joke about it. “None of those warm and fuzzies welcome here!” I laughed, all the while getting teary with the tingle factor myself! Anyway, SOS has brought me so much joy and has turned out to be my longest running choir thanks to my darling friend Sue. Our first big moment was at the end of 2016, our second year of SOS, when The Stacey Trust finally closed its doors after 20 years of our award for emerging conductors. (We had finished ten years of fund raising in 2006 when VoxSynergy was on my block, but we continued to give our award for another ten years) Out came “Make Our Garden Grow” one final time for the last hurrah Stacey Night! What a night it was! I was so proud of my Sossies that night. Musically, it was off the scale for us. Literally! But even though there were few Sossies who might have understood the importance of the occasion, nonetheless they went the distance. The other thing that Sue and I had devised was that our seasons would only ever be about Tuesdays. It has been rare for us to do things outside Tuesdays and we always made it clear that it was never an expectation that we’d have a full choir if we stepped outside that day of the week Nonetheless, for that Monday night gig, they were all there! The Sossies were joined by dear friends of Stace who came to support The Trust one last time; so with our ranks swelling we were a match for the Stacey All Star Big Band and blew the room away with Bernstein’s glorious finale to Candide. And the following night, our regular Tuesday night rehearsal, still they all turned up. That night was the 20th Anniversary of Stacey’s passing and I was taken out to the concourse at St Johns, serenaded with “Where Everything Is Music” while balloons were sent out into the sky to honour Stace and the moment. Getting teary thinking about it…..all of it. That generosity of spirit has been the hallmark of our beloved Sossies. Of course I wrote loads for them, tweaking even the commercial charts we bought to make them singable and user friendly. I had started doing part files long before SOS, by crassly putting my phone in memo mode on the desk and singing along to the Sibelius file playing from my computer. Sue took me in hand and taught me how to use GarageBand. I’m sure you can hear her rolling her eyes because it took a while to get me over that line, let me tell you! Never been fond of tech learning curves, but of course she was doing me a favour. It was never the case that we expected Sossies to be music readers, although as time went by we have attracted some great Sossie musoes, I have to say. But most have work and busy families and so practice in the car is where they get to know the season’s songs, often with the kids singing along from the back seat too! But yes, those part files have played a big part in the Sossie success. Our shows were always that. I wasn’t beholden to anyone. I had been going down that path for a long time really. I mean, you can take the girl out of the theatre, but you can’t take the theatre out of the girl can you?! So we had segues and theatrical devices and now the solo items were also drawn into the arena. Typically our performances have had anything and everything across history, continents and all manner of vocal styles and genres all joined together in one glorious continuum, the music speaking for itself. Any good song welcome here my friends! I love the thought that people go away having heard something new and different, something they might never have come across were it not for the SOS experience. There have been so many special moments, I barely know where to start, let alone finish, but finish I really must. We’re now in the land of YouTube, so no, there is no Sossie album, but plenty of memories forever in the ether. Sue has devised countless mash ups and song highlights so you can fossick to your heart’s content…. (Remember to google both Sounds of Southgate and Sounds of Singing) But, tip of the iceberg though these are, here are some selections I hold dear….. My first two are arrangements which I created from the ground up as there was no sheet music, not even a lead sheet or chord chart for these babies! Thank you Trinity College for all that laborious ear training drilled into me all those years ago!!!! Ruwenzori is by Miriam Stockley. Caleb Salizzo - piano JoJo Kitley - clarinet Nadene Gilmore, Evie Anderson and Mairead O’Connor -percussion https://youtu.be/krDTLmVobCs?si=B9aAovJzVnHpylDK Hold On To Love is an original of my bro Toby Sadler Morgen Pepper - soloist Linda O’Brien - piano Annie Gleisner - saxophone https://youtu.be/L10T_4_ITLA?si=Yg2O-jEkD3akvzzO One of the Sossies’ greatest achievements was marking the Centenary of the WW1 armistice in 2018 with our Centenary Cantata. Not The Great War (KS)>There’s No Place Like Home (as per Dame Nellie Melba)>Nella Fantasia - Morricone Jane Devlin - soloist Linda O’Brien - piano https://youtu.be/xyruIBYfE-4?si=3U42Yr7Rjfi2a0FP And finally a couple of KateSongs: Song For Mother (for our Mum’s, Sue and I - both passed since) Sara Grenfell - soloist Linda O’Brien - piano https://youtu.be/vViaW1CUnIQ?feature=shared As with many choirs we were knocked around by Covid, but kept going on line, keeping our voices in trim and learning new songs even in those strange circumstances. When we were finally able to sing together again we needed a larger, safer, airier space and we were thrilled that Wesley gave us such a warm welcome as we fired up again. We nearly managed a season in the first half of 2021, but Covid had other ideas! Since then we have had four fabulous seasons in 2022 and this year 2023, to round off what has been for me, not only a beautiful experience, but a fitting end to the 50 years of my adult life as ChoirKate; with the last 25 years spanning the first utterance of LAWA and the last chorus of Sing Like There’s No Tomorrow on 28th November. I never expected KateSongs. I like to think that they are Stace’s gift to me…… Thank you to Sue for everything that gave ChoirKate this extra decade of fun, friendship and music making with our beloved Sossies. Finally…… “Hear the sound of all those voices As they sing in harmony, Reaching down to heal all sorrow, A sweet celestial symphony. Though it takes many a light year To reach across the universe, The day we’re born it starts its journey, To hold our hand in every verse, every line and every word, The song of our Guiding Star.” Song of the Guiding Star Lareen Ashbolt - soloist Linda O’Brien -piano Klara Rawdanowic- violin https://youtu.be/TZVLFqRK_6A?si=HWxJPRUAckWLnlVK It has been so for my life thus far and I have no doubt it will hold true in whatever the next strange chapter holds for me. May it be so for you too. These Memory Lanes have been for my own benefit really. I could have just as easily kept a journal and saved you all the eye-rolling relentlessness of my recollections! But hey, it’s been fun to set it down. But if you have journeyed with me either here, or for a year or two singing with ChoirKate, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for every moment of our time together. The richest of blessings to have shared so much for so long with so many beautiful souls. Kxx
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 I was really quite at sea after the storm of VoxSynergy.
Exhausted from it. I didn’t really want to go near a choir again, but you know, I was born to do that choir thing particularly, so when my friend Ophelia asked me to fill in for her contemporary choir in 2010, I obliged. I had a bit of fun there, but wasn’t ready for any greater involvement. In 2011 I didn’t have a choir. However, at the end of that year I was one of four Australian composers to present selections of my music at a PrintMusic Works choral reading day. The others were the late Harley Mead, Paul Jarman and Mark Puddy. It was such a scary day for me! Like the Choral Conducting thing, it took a while for me to realise that actually I had the Choral Composing thing going on too! (Duh!) PrintMusic Works had taken me on for digital publication and I need to mention here the tireless work of David Wilson who fixed up my scores so they were fit for purpose. I had been learning the ins and out of Sibelius on the job and so many of my scores were frankly laughable! More recently, I am self published and now there’s even a catalogue of Learning Packs, so the singers can singalong with Auntie Kate to learn their parts! Still I did write, “Sing Like There’s No Tomorrow” in 2011. I remember it well, although that was a slow burn compared with others. But I have sharp recollection of walking down Liddiard St. in Ballarat for my next round of adjudication at South St, when the middle 8 came to me…. “When Ludwig had his trials, He’d his quill and skill employ, Defying all the odds he faced, He gave us his Ode To Joy.” Those lines still make me chuckle all these years later! And mid-year I took the Women’s Choir for the festival of choirs headed by my friend Jonathon Welch so Sing Like There’s No Tomorrow had a premier and I also composed my Hymn To St Cecilia especially for that group. That whetted my appetite a little, so when the job at Canterbury Girls’ Secondary College came up, I thought, “well, I know how to do a girls choir.” I had done workshops and adjudicated comps where these girls had been mega stars having been trained by the inimitable Beryl Nagorca for many years. The girls were every bit as fabulous as I believed them to be and I entered into another period of prolific writing and arranging. Significantly, I arranged Eddie Perfect’s “A Place By The River” for Cantabella. Such a special experience hearing him sing it in Hamer Hall, hearing the beautiful harmonies interweaving even as he sang; and then the follow up, his generosity of providing me with resources so that it was effortless. The girls did a stunning job and I’m thrilled that the chart has now had a ten year life and been sung countless times at festivals and jamborees across both the high school and community sector. (I snuck in an optional baritone part so it’s super user friendly) https://youtu.be/sEWKXuLFEoc (I put this together when we went into lockdown. Lucky for me this was within my exercise parameter) Gorgeous solo by Eilish McGregor “Where Everything Is Music” was written in my Cantabella period. My friend Heather was much on my mind for by this time she had been diagnosed with the cancer that would take her from us. She loved the poems of Rumi and I recall her reading his ecstatic Where Everything Is Music to me on my birthday. Late one night I was awake in the wee hours (you can imagine I do that a lot!) and with her in my thoughts I sat up and jotted down a little rhyme on Rumi’s theme. The next morning I taught a couple of students and was just about to cross the floor from my piano to the computer when I found myself lingering, my fingers itching with something…..then I started to play, then I remembered that I’d penned a poem in the night and out came the song, done and dusted by lunchtime! https://youtu.be/Uwc6wKN37WQ I was with Cantabella for three years and we gathered quite a fabulous collection of repertoire as the time rolled by. Time for another album! Kindly sponsored by the Australian Elizabethan Trust keen to support their alumni, Gorgeous Girls became something of a trump card for me. Understand, that the ABC’s directive for the VoxSynergy album did come with the proviso that they wanted to capitalise on Vox’s popularity on Battle Of The Choirs, so whilst I tucked a couple of my more esoteric KateSongs in there, the overall flavour was contemporary. With Gorgeous Girls I had total artistic say over the whole project. By this time Sue Webster was on my block. At the time she was studying digital design and had a keen eye as a photographer too. So our cover was, well, “gorgeous” and the liner notes and images outstanding. Gorgeous Girls was the opening track, an arrangement of mine of two old songs, Greensleeves and Douce Dame Jolie, with a bunch of groovy little riffs thrown in, all kicked off with Indian finger cymbals setting the scene. I loved writing it for them and they did a wonderful job. It’s really hard!!! Shout out to Dave Newington who was co-producer with me and played on several of the tracks and Jack Earle our accompanist at the time. I had all sorts of plans for a treble voice festival to get some mileage out of the album and also share the love beyond the school walls……. And I’d had fun putting it together so I was all set to roll another three years out and do it all again. Sadly, my vision wasn’t shared by the powers that be and no interest was shown in what the girls had achieved. That was a first for me. Disappointing. So that was that…….. But never fear for SOS is near! And so’s the end of this epic! Phew!  VoxSynergy! Yes well, talk about a crazy ride! Some will dredge the name up from Battle Of The Choirs, but that was actually the tail end of years of exploration, growth, KateSongs and all sorts.
Melbourne Youth Music asked me to come on board when the conductor of their Swing Choir left. Back on the block after my Canadian sabbatical still waving the flag of an Australian Voice unique to who we are, I said that I would caretake to tide them over but really I wasn’t interested in conducting a Swing Choir. Not my bag! MYM were fantastic from the word go saying that I should do whatever I felt was the right thing for their small group of talented young singers. So it was that I began building them musically and vocally, not really knowing what I meant by an Australian Voice, but following the hunch that our sound needed to be vibrant, passionate and malleable as we explored the idea. One Saturday after rehearsal very early in the piece, I was visiting Phil (yes, hurray for Phil!), but I was uncharacteristically early and he wasn’t home. So I took myself off to a cafe and sat down and wrote Synergy! Yes, my second KateSong turned up just like that! “Through the years songs were made, songs were sung to brighten up each hour, Melodies found harmonies and filled fainting hearts with power, Soon the song began to grow and other voices sang, And together they wafted skywards, ‘til the bells of heaven rang. Synergy, working together, Synergy, the sound of our song, Synergy, our energy united will be strong.” So it was that in the reworking of the name of this group VoxSynergy was borne. Our accompanist, Rebecca Hicks’ idea. Bingo! And grow it did. It wasn’t long before before we realised we needed a younger group to feed into the original ensemble who were upper high school and uni age. So we had VoxMajor and Voxminor for a while and then as more and more kids came into the program and the original group were by now scary in skill and taking the world by storm, we made that top group VoxSynergy, retaining VoxMajor for the middle teens and Voxminor straddling upper primary and preliminary high school years. It was HUGE! Shout out here to, Rebecca Lang, Prue Jury, Vicky Jacobs and Phillipa Safey whose expertise and brilliance gave so much to all levels of the VoxSynergy program. MYM hosted some fabulous festivals at The Edge, Fed Sq where we had multiple choirs join us in performances of themed music. Festival Luna, AquaFest etc etc and I started weaving songs together with segues and theatrical devices so our audience never had to endure the tedium of trudging entrances and exits. And all this time I was writing and arranging music for them, tailoring things so we had quality, singable songs which were not only KateSong originals, but also reworkings of music from multiple eras and from around the globe. So it was for instance, that for AquaFest we had a processional of Holst’s “Water Clear, Water Pure” to enter. The kids were wearing T-shirts of varying hues of green and blue and I have it on good authority that it looked like a growing stream and river as they processed down the steps at The Edge. Aficionados may realise that the 140 or so kids were walking in 5/4 time! Ha! Here’s an idea and off we go! “River of Love” was the finale item for AquaFest….. Running alongside this, I was the choral director of the Melbourne Girls Grammar chamber choir. So, I was writing for them too. They were a regular guest choir for the MYM festivals, as were Curtis Bayliss’ top ensemble from Melbourne High School. You had to be there! It was insane and yes, whilst I was brimming over with ideas, tripping over myself to make it all work, timetabling those Saturday morning rehearsals down to the last second, it did take its toll on all aspects of my health. I had cancer, pneumonia (nearly died from that)and off the scale anxiety! Andrea Gaze and I were running the Stacey Trust through all this too. VoxSynergy appeared in our Stacey Morning Melodies at the Concert Hall and sang the Trust’s theme song, “Make Our Garden Grow” in the final 2006 Stacey Night which wound up a decade of fundraising. VoxSynergy (by now you realise that that stellar bunch were the top group of three) were put forward for the ABC’s 2007 Choir of the Year competition. One of our number was over 21 and so it was that we had to be in the adult section of the competition. Yet we were clearly a Youth Choir! So we lost out to Concordis. But on the strength of that performance we were invited to present on Sunday Live at the end of 2007. Here it was that “Stealing” had its debut performance. The ABC also wanted us to make an album, featuring KateSongs and discussion was well under way about that. By now we had the 2008 Battle Of The Choirs nipping at our heels. Channel 7 were really keen for us to do it. We umm’d and ah-ah’d for weeks about it until it was Alli Kitching who said, ‘come on guys, it’ll be fun!” And the other thing was that despite the huge success of the VoxSynergy program we were under threat of being cut by the Department of Education, so it was also a bit do or die in that respect. So off we went to Sydney on the bus (12 hours there and 12 hours back) for the preliminaries and then again (12 hours there and 12 hours back!!!) a couple of weeks later for the finals. In between we had our annual Festival! Well, I had the rest of the kids to consider and had we not got through the preliminaries, we’d come home deflated and all the other kids wouldn’t have their annual jamboree, so we went ahead with it. My stress levels were through the roof. Even so, when VoxSynergy’s arms raised in that exquisite plea singing “in the arms of the angel, fly away from here…..” well…… https://youtu.be/_SuaOY19-oY?si=nsSn6OTcpY2xZ2Ip (Yes, that would be Raph Wong who blew the world away with his rendition of Advance Australia Fair at the Boxing Day Test last year!) I don’t know how those kids did it. All those charts were given to us to sing, so we were learning them on the hop and the choralography idea was new to us too and none of it was useful for our Festival, so they were completely immersed in multiple song and of course part learning, for weeks on end. Heaven only knows what their schools and unis thought about all this! It was after we had signed up that the choralography was jumped on us, as was the “enticement” of the winners making an album. I remember thinking, “well I’m pretty sure the CD Universal Records (woohoo!) will want us to make won’t be the CD I want to make!” (I was so right about that!) I was so proud of my kids! They just acquitted themselves with such dignity, joy and love throughout the whole show, both on and off camera. Bless their dear wonderful hearts. Remember the backdrop to everything for me was to embody what it meant to be Australian, musically and vocally. VoxSynergy had sung Britten’s “Rejoice In the Lamb,” and my arrangement of Allegri’s Miserere, adapting the words of Desiderata into the soaring loftiness of the music; and all manner of KateSongs, the sing-song KateSongs and Kate’sOtherSongs; Stealing, Ngapartji Ngapartji, and Song of the Upanishads. For me then the crowning moment was when they sang “You’re The Voice” in the semi-final of Battle Of The Choirs. https://youtu.be/augn7m8dtuU?si=JNOzHypwJn8rFaSU We didn’t win, but I didn’t really want to because I did not want to make that apparently tantalising CD that we would have to make. As it was we made the CD I wanted to make with the ABC and a sponsor stepped forward to keep us going for another year so we could sell that recording. There’s a lot more to this bit of the story which was really difficult and stressful - it broke me really. However, it happened and apart from the pivotal song of “Angel,” every song on that album was Australian AND it included Stealing and Ngapartji Ngapartji. Now really - woohoo! Now I need a drink! Kxx  Saying goodbye to those astonishing girls was one of the hardest things I have done in my life.
Off I went into the unknown………. I had met Dr Doreen Rao a couple of times, attending choral workshops where she was the Master Teacher. I loved her energy and her love of song; the heights, the depths, the breadth and breaths of it. So it was to Toronto I went for my post grad diploma of Advanced Choral Conducting, newly constructed by Doreen. And it was here that the healing finally began….. For here no one knew my story, no one saw me as Stace’s Kate and it was a revelation to me that people were interested in me, the solo version. And I discovered that I could tell stories and make people laugh! I have fond recollection of that pivotal time. Of the learning, the opportunities, of the fabulous camaraderie of my two classmates, Esther and dear Heather, sadly now passed way too young. We were a terrific trio, each bringing our gifts literally to the table at Mercurio’s for our study breakfasts. Esther, the phenomenally scary, perfect-pitched musician; Heather who had been studying with Doreen through our mentor’s fabulous Choral Music Experience program, and me? I think I brought quirkiness, left of centre thinking, maybe a touch of sheer bloody chutzpah…not sure? But above all the music, singing and relentless study and performance schedule, we laughed! Ah! The medicinal properties of laughter! We could be heard coming a mile away. Whenever we walked through a door which helpfully instructed me to “push,” I’d pull! I think I’ve always done that, a metaphor for me in life too! But my friends just laughed every time I did it and there were many doors at UofT, so plenty of scope to explore the gag! And they loved my turn of phrase which was often outrageously Aussie but delivered with what they thought was a posh English accent! I was just being myself, laughing at myself with them and I never knew that that Kate was entertaining and fun to be around. That was Stacey’s forte. And it happened that dear prom friends of my folks had emigrated to Canada. Marg Edwards and Les were wonderful to me, cheering me on from the sidelines and their family became my own. Marg is still with us, the last of those post war promenaders standing I believe! So, in my upcoming trip I’ll be seeing her and them all. So precious. I had half-heartedly written a paper called The Australian Voice as my submission for my grant. At the time I felt, “ah well, if I get it, I’ll be able to get rid of another miserable year of my bereft and barren life!” But of course, once I was in Toronto I had to look to it seriously! Eek! Turns out that I actually believed in my blah blah, because the big takeaway for me was the exploration of what it meant to be Australian in the choral world. To be truly Australian in a scene steeped in the English tradition, with the sheer juggernaut of Hal Leonard’s America in the mix, is such a tall and tricky order; our voice so small, so unexplored, so deeply buried beneath our bowing to all other expressions of song but our own. Should we just roll over……..? (Not on your life!) The other thing that the year away gave me was time out from voice teaching. A year after Stace exited stage left, I went to an ANATS workshop with Jo Estill. She was a very scary lady! I had been teaching successfully for years using mere hunch and intuition. I approached that workshop with trepidation. I mean, what if I was a charlatan? I think we all dread being found out! Anyway, lucky me to discover that my hunches were actually founded on anatomical function! Hurray! So, the other thing that happened in that year away was a re-grouping of my teaching and this spilled over into my choral world upon my return. Let’s see what can happen when we have voices that can leap through hoops of fire AND rock a baby in its cradle! Doreen did me the honour of not only scheduling LAWA in that year’s repertoire, but also putting it up for publication by Boosey and Hawkes, no less! A key song in the Mac.Rob tour was Sarah Hopkins’ Past Life Melodies and Doreen gave me the UofT women’s choir for this wonderful piece and LAWA in one of our concerts. I think Sarah H has done more than any other composer to delve into the rich heritage of our First Nations Australians with respect and love, so I leave you with this. https://youtu.be/IqRo9GlG0s4?si=SEkTUiK-Zl5r7E4n The next instalment brings us to VoxSynergy……. where my belief in the unique voice of Australia would take me to another group of extraordinary young singers.  A rather grubby looking dawn on January 1st 1999 found me on Woy Woy beach with my friend Lindy Hume.
We braved that unprepossessing morning with croissant and champagne, Lindy raising her glass to toast the New Year with Love, Art, Wisdom and Adventure. I reluctantly clinked glasses with her, for I was still in no mood for any kind of optimism. To me it was another dawn without Stace; each day taking me further away from him and the gift of our wonderful life together. I mentioned that I started fiddling with arrangements pretty much as soon as I hit Melbourne in ‘85, however as January ‘99 unfolded something very extraordinary happened. I was walking Charlie down at Merri Creek when a sweet melody came to me, “I am the Angel of Love, May your heart be warmed by my spirit, I am the Angel of Love, May your heart be whole.” ...........I know! It sends shivers down my spine to recall it. And I went home to find that the Angels of Art, Wisdom and Adventure were swift to pop by as I scrambled to scribble them all onto manuscript. I do not know how I wove them into the intricate counterpoint. This was long before Sibelius software was beneath my fingertips so I was following mere instinct as this, my first original KateSong, spilled out. It wasn’t until that heart stopping moment back at MacRob with my Chamber Voices that I had any inkling that it would work. I remember writing the Angels onto bits of paper and getting the girls to pick them out of a hat to determine the voice parts. It was way too complex a piece to fall neatly into place, but even so, once I heard those beautiful young voices singing each of those Angels’ melodies; stumbling though they were to work out the entries and hold onto their part; I knew something pretty unique had happened….. We had already been working towards a tour with Mary’s Chamber Strings so, realising that LAWA needed to be a recessional item, I crafted the accompanying harmonies for her girls to sing so every concert ended with the collective company receding into a distant world. So enchanting! * The tour was Mary’s brainchild of course. That baby was difficult to resist as we teased out the details. Amazingly, it all started one night when we were away together, chatter-natter; fantasising about the idea of taking our Mac.Robbies to the West Country of England, our own youthful stomping ground. What a glorious thing it would be to have them perform in the arching cathedrals, beneath crags of ancient ruins, humble parish churches and the like; which were such a huge part of our own young lives. We even timetabled it from the start in Bristol to the the finish in London, St Paul’s Cathedral no less and a host of treasures in between. Dream big! Why not? Every single thing we chose to do actually happened AND on the day we had nutted out in the wee small hours of that night. This was before email of course, so it was an extraordinary feat and again down to Mary’s tenacity and enthusiasm. The other thing that occurred in the early part of ‘99 was my application to the Australian Elizabethan Trust for an overseas study grant. Again, Mary’s idea, following the hunch that her sad sack friend needed to get out of town if she was ever going to turn her life around. I was the inaugural recipient of that grant and so it was that the UK tour would be my swan-song from MacRob and indeed that era of my life. This period from that dull January morning of ‘99, was to herald all that was to come not just for Mac.Rob but all the years since. 25 all up by the end of this year when I will be saying good bye to some of the most extraordinary moments of my life. Some of those moments have been very up there and out there, very public; scary and amazing. But there is no question that our Songs From Heaven and Earth UK tour was an astonishing achievement for those young women and one which Mary and I hold high above much that had happened before or since. We remain humbly grateful to them for once more going with the flow, working so hard towards getting on that plane, their parents, our colleagues, our loved ones. For giving us and each other and that little pocket of England their all, from start to finish. Our poignant last ever performance in St Paul’s Cathedral wafted into the annals of memory as those beautiful girls recessed into the transepts singing LAWA as they went…….. This live performance was recorded at Stourton parish church in Wiltshire. https://youtu.be/0f_com5Jkoc?si=DszTxuq5msP4_jLA Mary enlisted her friend Fiona McVey and Keith Upton of BBC Bristol to make the historic recording of Songs From Heaven And Earth, which closed with LAWA of course. Mary was the producer of this wonderful memento of that very special time. The opening soloist was Annie Hildebrand and the last remaining solo voice is Isabel Hertaeg with the Mac.Robertson Chamber Voices and Mac.Robertson Chamber Strings. *did you know that “to enchant” means “to surround with song.” And that’s precisely what those girls managed to do every single time!  First-any MacRobbies following this….if you can lay your hand on a snap of us in action I’d be grateful to receive it. Have seen one of us in Ballarat round here quite recently, but can I find it today? No!
(I have tour snaps…..) Everyone else…. Okay, so this is where it starts to get really interesting I think. First, you need to remember that for most of the 80s & 90s I was prancing around in frocks, usually with the VSO at the State Theatre and of course these years also encompassed my Stacey decade too. So I was literally having the time of my life! And then came the treasure trove of MacRob! I barely know where to begin this chapter, except to say that I stumbled into that voice teaching job and then into Choral Director of the place amidst various restructuring etc in the early 90s. How I loved it. All of it! The girls were fantastic. Teaching them was such a dream and you can imagine how wonderful it was to have them in both the Concert Choir and the newly formed MacRobertson Chamber Voices. I worked them so hard; early mornings, lunchtimes and after school with pizza dinners. And it wasn’t long before they were taking out prizes all over the place. Remember that these were the days well before tech made part learning beyond rehearsals possible; so the girls churned out song after song simply by being consistently present and intensely focused. We lived and breathed together those girls and I. I still didn’t really twig that being a Choral Conductor was actually my calling……I know! 🙄 I had to have a wake up call about that. It was *Paul Oakley who delivered the news. We had been involved in the Melbourne Festival of Choirs which had a competition running alongside the conference events and Paul was the high profile international guest serving as both adjudicator and key note presenter. So it was that we were there. Pipped to the post by the astonishing Eltham Primary kids led by the extraordinary Ann Williams as it happens. However, to my intense embarrassment Paul talked of the conducting he had seen across the days of the festival. He said that there was one conductor who seemed to have an uncommon level of musical skill, understanding and rapport. My dear friend and Director of Music Ophelia was sitting next to me digging me in the ribs, while I shook my head and denied that he could be talking about me. After the session, Paul bailed me up as I was trying to leave. Who was I? What was my background? Me, stuttering with, “well I’m just a two bit singer and teach these kids singing and I guess I’ve always done choirs….” trailing off apologetically. “Well,” said he, “THIS is what you need to be doing. THIS! You need to get on and take it seriously!” I got in my car and burst into tears for I knew he was right! Howled all the way up Punt Rd and Hoddle St I did. There was other stuff in there. You see I had never felt that I fitted in anywhere much. Diving into the VSO was the first experience of feeling ok about myself and having that sense of belonging. I never felt that about the choral scene. Still don’t really. Not casting any aspersions here. It’s just that I have always done my own thing and that has rarely been conventional. Increasingly the opposite of that in fact! And I knew that to put the hat on firmly, I would have to cast aside the frocks and frippery and revert to the proverbial square peg feeling. I didn’t really jump at Paul’s challenge it has to be said, mainly because Stace and I had hit a sticky patch in the early 90s but had grown beyond it and moved into calmer waters. I was enjoying this new experience with him. I loved him heart and soul. I was his, utterly. As is the way of this quirky thing called life two devastating things happened in October 1996. The VSO was merged into the AO and things would never be the same for the singers of Melbourne. That happened on the Monday and then on the Friday, Stace was taken from me and from us all. Stopping here for a moment. Breathe. For this is not about that story, but of course it was the catalyst for change, the property that invariably flows in the wake of chaos and catatonic situations such as these. No Stace and no more frocks. At this time my darling friend Mary came to MacRob to take the fabulous Chamber Music program and it wasn’t long before we were in cahoots with grand plans for the talented young women in our care. With our eye on the target of a UK tour in 1999, we set about putting the steps in place towards that goal. We both had romantic recollections of our childhood experience of Christmas back in our Mother Country and our students happily went along for the ride as we explored old favourites. Mary arranged the music for her Chamber Strings and together with the Chamber Voices they soared with the angels. Flamboyant turn of phrase maybe, but you really had to be there! Our mulled wine fund raisers In The Bleak Mid Winter became legendary. I say “our” - truth is I was in the darkest and gloomiest of places at this time and it was Mary who drove most of this with her vision and passion. Without Mary and without those glorious young voices I think I may have played the Miss Haversham card. As it was, I had to get up of a morning and get cracking. Healing and recovery were a fair way off at this point, but music making gave me slices of time away from my abject misery. The lovely mulled wine nights were also designed to build the repertoire so the singers would be ready for the bigger fundraising fish of a CD all done and dusted and on the shelves for Christmas 1998. It will be no surprise to you to learn that the wonderfully celebratory album titled, “In Dulci Jubilo” included Britten’s Ceremony of Carols! Of course it did! Mary had so much input into it including approaching her friend the MSO’s Principle Harp, Julie Raines to accompany the Britten. As well as rehearsing her Chamber Strings to accompany most of the carols Mary was at the sound desk, sourced the artwork, put together the liner notes and persuaded producers of the ABC and 3MBS to give the recording airplay. It was a massive success raising $16,000 towards the UK tour! Just one more little side step here is the heart stopping moment when my dad called me from the UK saying, “it’s about the CD Kate…..” pregnant pause, (and baited breath Downunder, for he was very short on any kind of praise with ready backhanders waiting in the wings) “It’s extraordinary and the Britten gives Kings College Cambridge a run for its money!” I nearly fell out of my hammock! Next instalment tells the story of what happened in January 1999 and beyond……. The roller coaster was just getting started! Here’s Britten’s Balulalow from Ceremony of Carols. The MacRobertson Chamber Voices Soloist - Jess Oddy With Julie Raines - Harp Recorded at Eaton Studios by Robin Grey Produced by Mary Johnston. https://youtu.be/DB7lDxFwGPM *In fiddling around with this story I went looking for Paul to get the spelling of his name right. Sadly I see he that passed away a relatively young man in 2012. I hope this finds its way to buddies in the US who might convey to Paul’s friends and family how very important and pivotal our brief encounter turned out to be. Bless you and thank you my friend. RIP  I already mentioned in Kate Goes To Trinity how much I loved singing in the various ensembles, large and small, in those hallowed halls of learning.
Such fun times. Now, Charlie Proctor, my famed sight singing teacher, was assigned to teach us Choral Conducting in my second year. He applied the same educationally sound principal in this class as he did in the sight singing class. Glaring over his half-mooned horn-rims, he lifted that somewhat arthritic index finger until it was in line with some hapless victim and said, “you!” Whereupon, “you” got up in front of the class and waved their arms around in some semblance of a regular beat pattern, while the rest of us willingly obliged as best we could, by sight singing our way through Handel’s Messiah. I cracked jokes when it came to my turn. Best I could do, but after a while, losing a little of my gaucheness at last, I started to feel it. Now as a youngster I had naturally felt music. But, you may recall I was intimidated in that place from the get-go. So it was good to feel vaguely competent as my arms moved and my mates smiled. Jumping a few years now to when I started out as a music teacher and I took to the whole kit and kaboodle of the teaching task like a proverbial duck. Early in the piece, my little choir started to sound pretty good, even being picked to go into Capital Radio and record Silent Night for broadcast during the Festive Season. A few fans wrote into the station saying how beautiful it was in its sweet simplicity. Re-locating to Australia with WA as my first taster of our vast continent, I was all at sea in so many ways. More to come about all that. Tricky time. But, I was so very lucky to fall on my feet when I was offered the position of classroom music teacher at Perth Mod. It was a very interesting place having an inner city catchment area, but with a school within a school of talented music students. Oh my! How my confidence soared in that place and the kids came with me heart and soul. With the recollection of my experience of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, I gathered the girls to learn that wonderful piece and by Christmas we were ready to sing it in St George’s Cathedral and the performance was recorded for broadcast on Christmas Eve, less than a year into my new life Downunder. I was so proud of them. I worked them really hard with practices every morning before school. But yes, they got there, and how! I wasn’t destined to languish in WA for long. Two years later I relocated to Melbourne to pursue further study in Opera and Music Theatre at the VCA. So in 1985, I packed up my little car, popped it on the train, while I braved the Nullarbor on the bus. Soooo much to say about this move, but I need to stay on track because this little string of memories is about ChoralKate….. Long story as to how I found myself teaching at Wesley College (most know that story from Blog#1), but here again I was tasked with the choir, along with so many other educational hats! As is usual in high schools, I had a bizillion girls and a handful of new voiced baritones when I took over the designated Swing Choir. It was here that I first started fiddling around with arranging stuff. I had to. There just wasn’t any music that I could find that was doable, singable or anything-else-able with my young charges, who although enthusiastic, didn’t always have music skills to match. So here I arranged, Begin The Beguine, Sailing, Sunny Side of the Street, etc etc. I also had a lovely auditioned group who sang madrigals and the like. Both choirs took out prizes here and there and my Chamber Group tackled Britten’s Rejoice In The Lamb for the school music festival, much to my joy. Although it was a bit of a curiosity, they came with me and got into it! Stace accompanied them on the organ in the little chapel there. I’m not sure their family and friends quite understood it though! At the time my conducting technique was probably more glorified cheerleading truth be, but it served well enough and my singers and I had a wonderful time in my early Melbourne days. The next instalment takes me to MacRob…..beautiful young women, so much to say, but in the middle of it all, the tragedy of losing Stace. Promise I’ll try to stay on the ChoirKate task, but it will be a wonderful if poignant instalment…… Meanwhile, here’s the Hallelujah from Britten’s Rejoice In The Lamb. https://youtu.be/CuuaeenFxhk?si=eb-HWMcMQWtYT09-  It was inevitable really. I mean, there was my mum; my songbird mummy; always with a song in her heart, a melody on her lips and her wonderful, wonderful voice, singing, singing, singing. Tra-la-la with all the twiddly bits and the trimmings!
As a young adult studying voice at Trinity College in London, I came to realise that she was singing Puccini, Verdi, Schubert and Strauss (both brands) Many of you know that story well enough. Fewer know that my daddy would ask his beloved of an evening, “well Pam, what would you like for this evening’s concert?” “Oh! I think some Beethoven would be lovely. Maybe the Pastoral Symphony?” And so my dad would get out the three 78s which constituted Ludwig’s 6th effort, wind up His Master’s Voice phonograph, place a yellow short score on the music stand, raise his baton and the London Symphony Orchestra would do his bidding! So there you have it, all that singing and conducting going on, how could I help but end up doing the choir thing? Of course, there was no call for me to be in front of a bunch of singers in my growing up years, (no extravagant House Music competions for budding young conductors to try out their waving back then), but I was always in whatever choir was going on at school. At high school that really kicked in for me. You know singing “real” stuff. I remember the first choir practice at Exmouth Grammar having the octavo of Handel’s Where E’er You Walk in my hands, loving that middle section where Handel’s genius writing literally “rises” to the occasion and also enjoying the sweet lilt of Quel Est C’est Odeur Agréable, which we prepared for the Carol Service. I loved Christmas, learning all the carols with the descants soaring. My sister had us trailing around the streets singing them door to door, to the delight of many hearing our harmony. We always gave them a rousing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” with a counter melody on the “good tidings” bit thrown in for good measure, as our neighbours popped pennies into the pot. In my middle teens I wasn’t a great fan of school, but of course I still loved singing in the choir and by then I was strumming my guitar and getting folks to sing with me, making up harmonies as we went. Plenty of that went on with my sister round the gospel circuit too. I remember there were actually a number of us at school who were pretty good singers and our music teacher taught us the best part of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with a professional harpist brought in for the Carol Service at St John’s in Glastonbury. I was picked to sing the alto solo for That Yongë Childe! Britten’s masterpiece has played an important part in my life as you will later see. As is my wont with these meanderings here’s Where E’er You Walk. I’m not sure it’s the same version we sang, but you get the gist. We just wore our regular old school uniform to sing though. (Just as well, maybe?😆) https://youtu.be/VviT8UbJN7M?si=eHaHwIwsWB55v-0y  I feel Very Strongly about much.
It can be a burden. One I would sometimes dearly love to shrug off. But there’s no shrugging The Voice. I’m pretty appalled that in 1967 that shift was a walk in the park, but here and now we’re questioning the value on the heads of every one of our aboriginal brothers and sisters. Seen some nasty twisted stuff in response to the ad. The hard-hearted breaking my own. Heaven knows the turmoil in the hearts of our First Nations family. It is said that a team is a good as its weakest player. In which case Team Australia will remain weak until we truly listen to the truth, thoughts and solutions to the horror story which is the lot of way too many. One of my proudest moments is when VoxSynergy blasted You’re The Voice into the homes of Australians glued to The Battle of the Choirs. Here they are! Enjoy! VoxSynergy - Battle of the Choirs Australia Semi Final May the naysayers be moved by John’s soaring vocals and generosity. May his anthem be whistled in the streets and sit in the voice and heart of every Australian wishing to stand tall and declare that the fair-go is alive and well in the true spirit of our beautiful land. Have a wonderful week singing from the rooftops as you go. Love to all, Kxx  youtu.be/QUQsqBqxoR4?si=E4g3JKZe1Clyn-CP
Well sometimes a fabulous song says it all! Thanks Sarah Bereilles! (YouTube clip for you to sing along at the top of your voice!) Been a bit quiet I know. Just processing stuff and dealing with some annoying health issues. Don’t worry, I’m not going to die, at least not from them. Age related niggles. 🙄 Just for the record, I’m not OK with aging! 🤣 But yes, need to hibernate a bit with it all. I have a very lucky life, but standing at a crossroads and yes, finding the courage to move forward into very unknown territory; kissing goodbye to a slab of something that has been so very amazing. More later about all that. Love you all. Be brave and have a wonderful week. Kxx https://youtu.be/QUQsqBqxoR4?si=E4g3JKZe1Clyn-CP |
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