Andrew Ford’s Red Dirt Hymns is a living songbook four years in the making, a hymn to the country beneath our feet.
In this Windsong Residency LAB featuring the Luminescence Chamber Singers, the work brings together the words of sixteen contemporary Australian writers—poets, essayists, and folksingers—capturing themes of praise, grief, hope, and the natural beauty of the land. These songs are not dedicated to a god, but to the earth itself.
The Luminescence Chamber Singers are joined by rising stars Hilary Geddes, 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow and lead guitarist of The Buoys, genre-defying cellist Freya Schack-Arnott and members of Sapphire Coast Choirs led by Geoffrey Badger and Dan Scollay.
From Ellen van Neerven’s dark clouds to John Kinsella’s lush gardens, Red Dirt Hymns does what a hymnal is meant to do: it brings us closer to each other and to the light and shade of the Australian landscape.
A selection of these works will be performed publicly on November 23rd, at the 2025 Four Winds Spring Youth Music Festival.
“Everyone’s red dirt under the clouds.”
Artists
Luminescence Chamber Singers, vocal ensemble
Freya Schack-Arnott, cello
Hilary Geddes, guitar
Roland Peelman AM, composer and conductor
Members of Bega Male Voice Choir, Riverbend Choir, That Bunch of Singers, Spirit Allegro and Djinama Yilaga + Choir directors Geoffrey Badger and Dan Scollay
