Melbourne Women’s Choir
The Melbourne Women’s Choir celebrates its 31st year in 2024, with concerts to delight both singers and audience, and music favourites past and new celebrating wonderful compositions and arrangements for women’s choirs. What enjoyment!
MWC year in 2024
Choral@Montsalvat
Sunday 5 May from 12 noon to 5.00 pm
Montsalvat, 7 Hillcrest Ave, Eltham
MWC is one of fourteen choirs in the choral festival run by Faye Dumont Singers and hosted by the Melbourne Women’s Choir and the Melbourne Chamber Choir. MWC is singing music by Purcell, Bach and Mascagni and recent works by Dubra – Latvia and Real – Spain, as well as four Australian compositions. In the final hour, in the Showcase of Australian Compositions, MWC will premiere a piece by Melbourne Conservatorium student Moses Kington-Walberg.
Get Tickets to Choral@Montsalvat
Northern Lights
Sunday 7 July at 2.30 pm
Holy Trinity Anglican Church, High St / 1a Pakington St, Kew
With choral works picturing the northern skies as seen from Latvia and Canada, this concert also introduces music of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and USA. The stunning music, sacred and secular, will highlight the heritage of creativity of composers of those northern lands.
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Wintersong
Saturday 3 August at 2.30 pm
Holy Trinity Anglican Church, High St / 1a Pakington St, Kew
A winter soiree to warm the spirit with glorious choral music. It is a shared concert with the Melbourne Chamber Choir, with which MWC will sing Mozart’s Ave verum corpus and Laudate Dominum.
MWC will sing Stanford and Grieg and will present the Australian premiere of He is Mine by Irish composer Sean Doherty. And Irish and Scottish folk song arrangements.
Celtic Women
Sunday 6 October at 2.30 pm
North Balwyn Uniting Church, 17-21 Duggan St, North Balwyn
Favourite upon favourite! Songs of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Here are some: The Galway Piper / All Through the Night / Go, Lassie, Go / The Last Rose of Summer / The Minstrel Boy / Danny Boy / Loch Lomond / Lift the Wings. Music to hum, whistle and remember with a smile.
Carols in the Chapel
Saturday 14 December at 7.30 pm
Good Shepherd Chapel, 1 St Heliers St, Abbotsford
A Christmas celebration for you with twelve Australian composers or arrangers in colourful carols. Starting with Adoremus – Malcolm Williamson it includes Percy Grainger, Margaret Sutherland, W G James, Dulcie Holland, Eric Gross and more. There will be talking animals and carolling currawongs in joyful company. Distinction in music and delight for the spirit at Christmas.
Get Tickets to Carols in the Chapel
Our past
The Melbourne Women’s Choir celebrates its 31st year in 2024.
It’s first performance was in a Melbourne-hosted Women Composers Conference. It has sung with the Melbourne, Sydney and Stonnington symphony orchestras (The Planets – Holst three times and A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Mendelssohn twice). The choir has appeared on the TV Football Show; in the year 2000 was one of the choirs in the Classical Spectacular with the Melbourne Symphony on Rod Laver Arena; it participated in a gospel musical in St Patrick’s Cathedral; in 2006 travelled to Adelaide for a women’s choir festival; and sang a Sister Act gig in costume at the Sofitel Hotel. It has shared concerts with several women’s choirs – the Kanazawa Choir of Japan; the Cecilian Singers of New Zealand and with Women of Note, Bendigo, in A Tale of Two Cities in both Bendigo and Melbourne. In 2019 it was included in the Music Festival of Women of Note in Bendigo. With male choirs it has sung with the Gwent Male Choir of Wales, the Adelaide Male Choir and the Melbourne Mastersingers. The choir has hosted 10 national Voices of Women festivals and has co-hosted (with the Melbourne Chamber Choir) 18 Victorian Choral@Montsalvat festivals. MWC has provided the Valour Hymn for the Victorian Police Force and has sung the music for a film and a video game. For many years it twice-annually sang in the Student Mass at St Carthage’s, Parkville; for the Kew Interfaith Service for the Kew Arts Festival; and this year for the 8th time the Carmelite annual Carol Evening in Kew. Gigs returned in 2022 and MWC was found entertaining passengers in the Departure Lounge areas of Qantas Airways, and in 2023, carolling at Martha’s Cove on the Mornington Peninsula.
The Melbourne Women’s Choir has produced three CDs – Virtuoso Women – music of the orphanages of Venice, accompanied by orchestra; My Song in the Night – a selection of beautiful sacred and secular music accompanied by May Gavin; and And the Angels Sing including A Ceremony of Carols – Britten, Choral Hymns of the Rig Veda – Holst and A Child Comes Forth – Hamilton – all accompanied by harp. Purchase these CDs here.
The choir has toured to Europe twice:
– in 2016 singing with Trinity College Choir in Greenwich; a concert at Cambridge University; concerts in La Madeleine and in St Eustache churches in Paris; at The Salon and in the Episcopal Church in Geneva; and in La Pieta in Venice;
– in 2019 singing at a Mass and concert in St Stephen’s Cathedral and a concert in St Peter’s church in Vienna; concerts in St Martin in the Wall and in St Nicholas church in Prague; at Nymphenburg Palace in Munich; and in La Pieta in Venice.