Sharing a feed, being outdoors, and spending time with loved ones: Australians are singing together about the unique experience of Christmas Down Under in the ABC Classic Choir.
It's 2020 and most of the world is under pandemic restrictions of some kind. For music lovers, our usual social outlets — seeing live music, or playing music and singing with others — are off the table.
At ABC Classic, we live by our motto "Life's better with music". We spent the pandemic finding every way we could to share that in a world where music became more important than ever, but it was something we could no longer make together in real life., and as a socially distant Christmas looked likely, we hatched a plan to start an online choir and bring people together to sing across the country.However, the question remained: What music could bring Australia together? It clearly wouldn't be the popular carols reflective of European and North American experiences of Christmas, full of snow, firesides, and sleigh bells. The only option was to commission a brand new carol, composed with the Australian experience of Christmas in mind, and reflective of our common experience at that time. Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AM, Yorta Yorta and Yuin composer, soprano and Christmas lover, joined the project and she composed the first-ever Classic Choir song, Christmas With You. Cheetham Fraillon dedicated the song to "everyone who has been parted from those they love in this year of loss and chaos"."I wanted to capture that longing, but also the hope that can spring from knowing that there are those who are thinking of you, even if you can't physically be together." ARIA-winning producer and engineer Virginia Read led an audio team to blend everyone's voices into a single choir, and digital producer Matthew Lorenzon worked magic to represent everyone on screen. Everyone at ABC Classic played a part in making the Classic Choir sing, but especially our audience. I must have listened to Christmas With You hundreds of times before we shared that final video, but I still burst into tears when we premiered it on social media. I know I wasn't the only one.Cheetham Fraillon says it's one of the most rewarding pieces she's written. "Watching people's response, and what it meant to them, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it," she shared."You could see they were singing it about someone they loved and their own circumstance," she said. "I don't think there's anything more a composer can ask than to be understood and to actually know that you've reached someone on that deep emotional level."Since then, the growing Classic Choir Songbook focuses on the Australian experience of Christmas and summer. Community is at the heart of it. Content manager Kat McGuffie stressed the important role of ABC Classic in fostering music-making across the nation and getting people singing. "Growing up in Darwin, I saw firsthand how vital community music-making was to bringing people together and finding identity," she said. She sees the Classic Choir Songbook as something that connects music lovers through stories that reflect Australian life: "No sleighbells and snowflakes! Schools, community groups, professional choirs and families now own a collection of songs made just for them."It was all about family and home: "Whatever family is to you. Your chosen family, your birth family, or your rainbow family. All is love," Noonan said at the time. Noonan's lyrics reflected the many places people find home, apparent in the videos the choir submitted. People sang from dining tables, living rooms, a church, nature, and even their shed.who picked up the call to sing on the ABC's WeChat account. The lyrics resonated with the Liu family: "Music is the bond of our family … We have so many pressures in life, but family gives us peace of mind, gives us the sense of happiness." Then in 2022, as the world started to open up, Classic Choir moved toward celebrating the joy of singing together. Slockee consulted elders and communities from Noongar country in Western Australia to Lutruwita for permission to use words from the various language groups in the song.He set out to explore the diverse seasons and foods that make Australian Christmas so unique. For Slockee, the song was "a celebration of family and of life. It's a time of everybody coming together and not thinking about themselves for once – thinking about others and the bigger picture." For the first time, we received many submissions from choirs and groups of people singing together in person. It was clear that the Classic Choir was evolving.Three years, and three songs later, this year's Classic Choir song is Summer Together, a new tune with music by Elena Kats-Chernin and words by Gunai poet Kirli Saunders. Kats-Chernin, who was born in Uzbekistan, had no idea what Christmas carols were when she came to Australia in 1975. But she was soon singing carols at the Sydney Opera House after joining her school choir. "It was such a fantastic feeling," she recalled. "I didn't know anyone and didn't speak English that well but being in a choir helped me learn faster."Vanessa Hughes, ABC Classic's Drive presenter and self-confessed choir nerd, has been hard at work getting people singing. "It's changed so much since we started singing together in 2020," she reflected. "Then it was about making anything meaningful to improve our wellbeing at such a tricky time, but now Classic Choir is about so much more, singing with other people in the room. Actually hearing each other, listening to each otherto choirs, choral music and the joy of singing. She's been connecting people with their local groups and giving people who can't get to rehearsals a chance to sing along with the radio. Liz, a listener from Mount Gambier, is going to sing Summer Together with her friend Jude at the family Christmas lunch. She thinks the choir is a great place to start singing "because you can be doing it in the privacy of your own kitchen, or your own sunroom, or your own garden … there is nobody then to be critical."Conductor Christie Anderson, who led the Adelaide rehearsal, emphasised the importance of singing together. "We learn a lot about ourselves. We learn a lot about accepting one another. I think it's a really positive environment for inclusivity," she said. One of those choirs is Willoughby Symphony Choir. Hailing from Northern England, music director Peter Ellis says that even after 22 years in Australia, he's still getting used to a hot Christmas, but it's nice to have music for a specific Australian audience. He appreciates singing songs about "all the wonderful things about an Australian Christmas, the food".Dr Karl knows the best app for free podcasts, radio, music, news and audiobooks … and you don’t need to be a scientist to find it!VOX star in this year's music videoSo, raise your voice and be a part of the Classic Choir. In the words of Gwladys, who sings withThe one event of the week that’s worth leaving the house for: This community choir helps people find the confidence to singBrisbane bus crash victim Tia Cameron's family say 18-year-old 'tragically stolen from us'Grief over Samantha Murphy is complicated by arrest of local man, Ballarat mayor saysOptus networks director resigns four months after mass outageOverworked, underpaid and exhausted: Why chefs are leaving the hospitality industry'Horrific' vision of koalas scrambling, falling as trees cut down spurs government actionBrisbane bus crash victim Tia Cameron's family say 18-year-old 'tragically stolen from us'Grief over Samantha Murphy is complicated by arrest of local man, Ballarat mayor says
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