Gordon Kerry opens this CD with a setting of William Shakespeare’s 33rd Sonnet. Shakespeare describes how the morning light performs a ‘heavenly alchemy’ on the landscape.

Works by seven other Australian composers follow, each of them conjuring their own alchemy. The voices of individual singers are like base metals, which, given the right circumstances, undergo a seemingly magical transformation into a choral sound of pure gold.

Time Passages (track 12) by Alan Holley was commissioned by the Australian Chamber Choir to form the centrepiece of a program entitled Terra Australis. The program traced the history of the mapping of the Australian continent, marking each important date with a choral work, usually from the same year. Time Passages, the poem, was composed by Mark Tredinnick to mark the date upon which Captain James Cook opened the “secret letter”––the document by which he was contracted to sail in search of Terra Australis (3 June, 1769).

1 Alchemy Gordon Kerry
2 Kondalilla Stephen Leek
3 Power in Stillness Christine McCombe
4 A Lexicon of Dreams Christine McCombe
5–6 Fern Hill Luke Speedy-Hutton
7 Earth, from Gagudju Man Tom Henry
8 Sacred, from Gagudju Man Tom Henry
9 Return to Earth, from Gagudju Man Tom Henry
10 I had a dream Brenton Broadstock
11 Unspoken Luke Hutton
12 Time Passages Alan Holley
13 A Traveller, from English Eccentrics Malcolm Williamson
14 The Quacks, from English Eccentrics Malcolm Williamson

Publication date: 30 May 2024

Price: AU$27.49 plus $5.51 (postage and handling*). Price includes GST.