Australians singing their way to a shared Christmas
It's 2020 and most of the world is under pandemic restrictions of some kind. For music lovers, our usual social outlets — seeing live music, or playing music and singing with others — are off the table. Singing together is even deemed dangerous in the environment of COVID-19.
At ABC Classic, we live by our motto "Life's better with music". We spent the pandemic finding every way we could to share that in a world where music became more important than ever, but it was something we could no longer make together in real life.
Knowing all the benefits of singing, and as a socially distant Christmas looked likely, we hatched a plan to start an online choir and bring people together to sing across the country.
From kitchens, dining tables, and kids' bedrooms, we figured out how to make it happen technically.
However, the question remained: What music could bring Australia together? It clearly wouldn't be the popular carols reflective of European and North American experiences of Christmas, full of snow, firesides, and sleigh bells.
The only option was to commission a brand new carol, composed with the Australian experience of Christmas in mind, and reflective of our common experience at that time.
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AM, Yorta Yorta and Yuin composer, soprano and Christmas lover, joined the project and she composed the first-ever Classic Choir song, Christmas With You.
Cheetham Fraillon dedicated the song to "everyone who has been parted from those they love in this year of loss and chaos".
She explained how we've all been in a situation where we can't be with our loved ones at Christmas.
"I wanted to capture that longing, but also the hope that can spring from knowing that there are those who are thinking of you, even if you can't physically be together."
That first year, more than 1,500 people sent in videos of them singing Christmas With You.
ARIA-winning producer and engineer Virginia Read led an audio team to blend everyone's voices into a single choir, and digital producer Matthew Lorenzon worked magic to represent everyone on screen. Everyone at ABC Classic played a part in making the Classic Choir sing, but especially our audience.
I must have listened to Christmas With You hundreds of times before we shared that final video, but I still burst into tears when we premiered it on social media. I know I wasn't the only one.
Loading...Cheetham Fraillon says it's one of the most rewarding pieces she's written. "Watching people's response, and what it meant to them, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it," she shared.
She recognised the effort singers went to learning the piece and personalising it.
"You could see they were singing it about someone they loved and their own circumstance," she said.
"I don't think there's anything more a composer can ask than to be understood and to actually know that you've reached someone on that deep emotional level."
Bringing people together through music
Since then, the growing Classic Choir Songbook focuses on the Australian experience of Christmas and summer. Community is at the heart of it.
Content manager Kat McGuffie stressed the important role of ABC Classic in fostering music-making across the nation and getting people singing.
"Growing up in Darwin, I saw firsthand how vital community music-making was to bringing people together and finding identity," she said.
She sees the Classic Choir Songbook as something that connects music lovers through stories that reflect Australian life: "No sleighbells and snowflakes! Schools, community groups, professional choirs and families now own a collection of songs made just for them."
Loading...In 2021, after a second year of social distancing, songstress Katie Noonan wrote All Is Love for the choir.
It was all about family and home: "Whatever family is to you. Your chosen family, your birth family, or your rainbow family. All is love," Noonan said at the time.
Noonan's lyrics reflected the many places people find home, apparent in the videos the choir submitted. People sang from dining tables, living rooms, a church, nature, and even their shed.
Music is a shared bond for the Liu family.
Among them were a Manchu family in Melbourne who picked up the call to sing on the ABC's WeChat account. The lyrics resonated with the Liu family:
"Music is the bond of our family … We have so many pressures in life, but family gives us peace of mind, gives us the sense of happiness."
Then in 2022, as the world started to open up, Classic Choir moved toward celebrating the joy of singing together. Gardening Australia presenter and Bundjalung man Clarence Slockee shared a new take on the classic carol, Oh Christmas Tree.
Slockee consulted elders and communities from Noongar country in Western Australia to Lutruwita (Tasmania) for permission to use words from the various language groups in the song.
Loading...He set out to explore the diverse seasons and foods that make Australian Christmas so unique. For Slockee, the song was "a celebration of family and of life. It's a time of everybody coming together and not thinking about themselves for once – thinking about others and the bigger picture."
For the first time, we received many submissions from choirs and groups of people singing together in person. It was clear that the Classic Choir was evolving.
Celebrating singing together
Three years, and three songs later, this year's Classic Choir song is Summer Together, a new tune with music by Elena Kats-Chernin and words by Gunai poet Kirli Saunders.
Kats-Chernin, who was born in Uzbekistan, had no idea what Christmas carols were when she came to Australia in 1975. But she was soon singing carols at the Sydney Opera House after joining her school choir.
"It was such a fantastic feeling," she recalled. "I didn't know anyone and didn't speak English that well but being in a choir helped me learn faster."
Summer Together captures the quintessential Australian summer: sharing a feed, being outdoors and spending time with loved ones.
Vanessa Hughes, ABC Classic's Drive presenter and self-confessed choir nerd, has been hard at work getting people singing.
"It's changed so much since we started singing together in 2020," she reflected. "Then it was about making anything meaningful to improve our wellbeing at such a tricky time, but now Classic Choir is about so much more, singing with other people in the room. Actually hearing each other, listening to each other
Every Thursday, she dedicates the Classic Choir Hour to choirs, choral music and the joy of singing. She's been connecting people with their local groups and giving people who can't get to rehearsals a chance to sing along with the radio.
Liz, a listener from Mount Gambier, is going to sing Summer Together with her friend Jude at the family Christmas lunch. She thinks the choir is a great place to start singing "because you can be doing it in the privacy of your own kitchen, or your own sunroom, or your own garden … there is nobody then to be critical."
Your invitation to sing
In the spirit of getting people together, we held our first in-person rehearsals at the ABC in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide.
Conductor Christie Anderson, who led the Adelaide rehearsal, emphasised the importance of singing together.
"We learn a lot about ourselves. We learn a lot about accepting one another. I think it's a really positive environment for inclusivity,"she said.
Choirs around Australia are singing music from the Classic Choir Songbook in their end-of-year concerts.
One of those choirs is Willoughby Symphony Choir. Hailing from Northern England, music director Peter Ellis says that even after 22 years in Australia, he's still getting used to a hot Christmas, but it's nice to have music for a specific Australian audience. He appreciates singing songs about "all the wonderful things about an Australian Christmas, [like] the food".
This year we're inviting anyone singing music from the Classic Choir Songbook to be part of our gallery and to share a video of your rehearsal or performance, whether it's just you, your family or loved ones, community choir or professional singers.
Young adult choir VOX star in this year's music video, performing Summer Together against the picturesque backdrop of Gadigal country's Sydney Harbour.
On Sunday from 2pm, sing along with VOX and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Orchestra in our live broadcast of Carols At The House, featuring Summer Together, as well as a mix of carols and favourite Christmas music.
So, raise your voice and be a part of the Classic Choir. In the words of Gwladys, who sings with Rewire Musical Memories Choir:
"When you sing, it just makes you feel good."