5pm, Sunday May 11
St. Mark’s Anglican Church, Fitzroy

Music amid disorder, cruelty and obliteration: a polyphonic Passion from the heart of the 30 Years War is joined by a graphic Mass after the military coup in Chile, and a choral-poetic cycle from the French Resistance in the last winter of World War 2. 

Christoph Demantius, León Schidlowsky, Francis Poulenc, Philippe Hersant, Jean Ockeghem, Nuevo canción chileno: Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, Sergio Ortega

The Astra Choir and Soloists
John McCaughey conductor,
with Helen Ayres violin, Timothy Phillips & Alexander Meagher percussion, Niels Bijl, saxophone, Linda Kent organ

8pm, Friday July 25
Hall of St Mary’s, North Melbourne

Since returning to Australia in 2019, Andrew Byrne has taken his music in new directions. Recent pieces explore systems—cellular automata, spirals, tilings, and canons—where mathematical rigour meets the spark of creativity. This concert premieres a selection of his latest works.

Andrew Byrne, FORTY-EIGHT: FALLING & RISING, GLINTS, COMMAS, TILING CANONS, SPIRAL STUDIES
with canons by JS Bach

 Ensemble of winds, keyboard, percussion

Twisted Runways - sound in motion through improvisation, radical compositions, and creative exchanges

8pm, Friday August 8
Hall of St Mary’s, North Melbourne

This concert launches the JOAN EVENTS, a multi-year project of new impulses in performance and composition, supported by the Joan Pollock Creative Fund.

Creative exchanges, improvisations
with Ruth Crawford, STUDY IN MIXED ACCENTS (1930)
Helen Gifford, OBSESSION for Joan Pollock (2005)

Kim Bastin, piano; Jessica Aszodi, voice; Elizabeth Drake, piano; Jaslyn Robertson, synths, Chloë Sobek, violone & electronics; Iran Sanadzadeh, pressure-sensitive floors

Twisted Runways - sound in motion through improvisation, radical compositions, and creative exchanges

8pm, Saturday August 30
Church of All Nations, Carlton

CREATURE PATTERNS

Patterns—human and machine-generated—explore connections between systems, technology, and music-making. In algorithmic structures and through live interaction these new works reshape the experience of performance.

Andrew Byrne, ANTS with dancers and percussionists
James Hullick, DISRUPTIVE CRITTERS with live video and recorded vocal sounds

‘Musical intelligence' is explored in this pair of concerts. The automated processes of this program are followed on 6 September by the particular intelligence of poems, entering into choral sound.

8pm, Saturday September 6
Church of All Nations, Carlton

POETRY INTO MULTIPLE VOICES

Premiering two vocal-poetic cycles for choir and solo voices: Andrée Greenwell THREE PIECES (2021) (Felicity Plunkett, Rilke, Ross Gibson), David Howell INTO THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SUN SONGS OF TRAVEL (2022) (Dan Christie)

with choruses of: Keith Humble (Wen Ting-Yung), György Ligeti (Hölderlin), Graham Hair (Alan Gould), Peggy Glanville-Hicks (Wallace Stevens), Helen Gifford (Akhmatova, Kathleen Raine, Elizabeth Riddell), Rainer Linz (John Jenkins, Ted Hopkins, Paul Greene), Carl Vine (Thomas Campion), Philippe Hersant (diverse poets)

The Astra Choir and Soloists
John McCaughey, conductor

8pm, Friday October 3
Hall of St Mary’s, North Melbourne

A new work after Balzac by Neil Kelly (2025)

Balzac’s Gambara (1837) follows a demented composer, his long suffering wife Marianna, and their scheming patron, Count Marcosini. This performance, a prototype for a larger theater/dance work, explores the novella’s vision of ‘music’—from ‘the sublime chorus of angels’ to a ‘hideous cacophony’—played on piano and a panharmonicon, a proto-synthesiser.

Michael Kieran Harvey, piano
Michael Hewes, audio processing

Twisted Runways - sound in motion through improvisation, radical compositions, and creative exchanges

3pm, Sunday October 26
Hall at St Mary's, North Melbourne

This concert places the worlds of the fearless Abbess Cozzolani of Milan and the opera celebrity and English immigrant Handel among more recent British experimental performance pieces, and a new ensemble communication by Naarm composer Charlie Sdraulig. 

Behind the cathedral: Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, CONCERTATO PIECES (1642),
In the ducal chapel: George Frideric Handel, CHANDOS ANTHEM, "As Pants the Hart" (1719),
In art rooms: Laurence Crane, COME BACK TO THE OLD SPECIMEN CABINET, JOHN VIGANI (2007),
John White, DRINKING AND HOOTING MACHINE (1968)
Charlie Sdraulig New work (2025), solo voices, choir and live electronics

The Astra Choir and Soloists
John McCaughey, conductor

October / November 

3 Performance Laboratories at JOLTED Performance Space, Northcote

in partnership with Jolt Arts

MORE INFORMATION TO COME.

November 25, Hobart Town Hall
November 26, Princess Theatre Launceston
November 27, Burnie Arts Centre

New arrangements of PATTERNS OF PLANTS by Japanese composer Mamoru Fujieda (2024, commissioned by Astra) for a 7-piece ensemble of traditional Japanese and Western Baroque instruments are presented for the first time in Tasmania as part of Van Diemen’s Lunchbox Series.

Astra Ensemble: Miyama McQueen-Tokita & Brandon Lee, kotos; Henry Liang, sho; Laura Vaughan, gamba; Julia Fredersdorff, Baroque violin; Ryan William, recorders; Alexander Ritter, countertenor
Directed by Andrew Byrne

in partnership with Van Diemen’s Band

5pm, Sunday December 14
St Mark's Anglican Church, Fitzroy

Choral music shows its unique attributes in expressions beyond the immediate moment, and conversations across great distances in time and space.

Antoine Brumel, Livia Teodorescu, Gianandrea Pauletta, Giovanna Dongu, George Balint, Dan Dediu, Max Reger

The Astra Choir and Soloists,
John McCaughey, conductor
with string quintet and
Linda Kent, organs