Elizabeth Sheppard Media

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I’ve noticed that Australian Church Choirs are under rated and under exposed in the Australian and international media, probably due to the fact that many Australian Church communities are managed as socially restricted “fortress” communities. As a result, Australian media presenters (who are often strictly excluded from Australia’s “fortress” churches) are presenting Australian society to the world, and to Australian children and youth, as predominantly secularised, and far less Christian than it actually is.

In this blog, I provide links to Australian Church choirs, databases of Australian Church Choirs, and organisations that maintain, promote, publish, and market Australian Church music. Australian churches are of many cultures, so building these connections assists multicultural understanding, as well as demonstrating the wide scope and extent of constructive, peaceful Australian church music networking and music making.

Karina Gough’s list of Melbourne Choirs is a good starting point. You can find it by cutting and pasting this URL into your browser.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~choirs/

As is usual in Australia, this internet choir list favours secular choirs and only includes a handful of Melbourne’s many Church choirs. It seems that Australian Church choirs simply don’t bother to register on non-denominational Choir lists, or join general choral associations. By confining Church choir publicity and networking to denominational websites, Australian Church musicians are doing themselves out of many opportunities.

As organist Mark Quarmby helpfully points out, the Royal School of Church Music in Australia maintains a larger (but far from comprehensive) membership list of Australian Church choirs, see link below:

http://www.rscmaustralia.org.au/Links.htm

The Australian National Choral Association (ANCA) lists only 4 parish Church choirs in its membership, and 10 Church school and ethnic Church community choirs. I counted a total of 47 member choirs of this organisation listed on their website.

http://www.anca.org.au/find-choir

Some Australian choir websites omit Church choirs altogether, e.g.

http://www.choirplace.com/choirs/choirs-in-australia

http://www.caoa.org.au/index.php/choirlinks (Choral Association Australia Inc., 54 choirs registered, but no Church choirs)