Astra Quarter-Hour concerts

A series of short aural-video programs for online listening and viewing, assembled from the Astra Concerts archive from the 1950s to the present, and introducing new studio works from composers in the period of COVID-19.

Drawing on these past and current elements, mini-concerts are created that never took place as such, from items separated in time and place. New ways open up for Astra's characteristic program experiences, of encounters between different styles and eras in music, both choral and instrumental.

View the entire series of Quarter-Hour concerts.

 

Video from past Astra concerts

The Astra Choir, soloists and instrumental ensemble conducted by John McCaughey performing 60 Cycles (The Breath of Empty Space) by Neil Kelly in the concert 60s Cycles at North Melbourne Town Hall, 3 December 2011. Excerpt. Video by Rainer Kelly.

 

Miwako Abe, Aaron Barnden (violins), Helen Ireland (viola), Alister Barker (cello) play Neil Kelly's Flush, (for four players), string quartet/card game, at an Astra concert on 10 Oct 2011 at Fitzroy Town Hall, Melbourne.

 


Description: 

The Astra Choir with pianists Michael Kieran Harvey, Kim Bastin, Joy Lee and Peter Dumsday perform Dance of the Bee (excerpt) by Martin Friedel at Artshouse North Melbourne Town Hall, 11 Sept 2015

 

The Astra Choir with speaker Richard Piper and instrumental ensemble conducted by John McCaughey perform Untitled (Moths) by Slave Pianos, excerpt from The Lepidopters: A Space Opera at Artshouse North Melbourne Town Hall, 12 & 13 April 2014. Video artist Terra Bajraghosa. Other performers included Rachel Saraswati (singer/dancer), Michael Kieran Harvey (piano/synthesiser), Punkasila and Slave Pianos.

 

The Astra Choir with speaker Richard Piper and instrumental ensemble conducted by John McCaughey in an excerpt from Slave Pianos' Dissident Consonances, or, The Iron Curtain, The Flux-Labyrinth & Lithuanian House, based on the correspondence of Fluxus founder George Maciunas and Lithuania's first post-Soviet President Vytautas Landsbergis.  Lithuanian House, North Melbourne, 26 & 27 May 2007.