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
Meet the Artists
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Luminescence Chamber Singers
Luminescence Chamber Singers is a professional vocal ensemble based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country (Canberra, ACT). Led by mezzo soprano AJ America, Luminescence has emerged as one of Australia’s most exciting professional ensembles, championing the unbound expressive potential of our original instrument: the human voice.
First founded in 2015 amongst undergraduate students, Luminescence now comprises a professional six-voice ensemble (Luminescence Chamber Singers), an annual concert season, a commissioning and creative development program, touring activity across regional and metropolitan NSW, Victoria, and South Australia, and a wide array of outreach and music education programs, including Luminescence Children’s Choir, an acclaimed program for singers aged 10 – 17, and an annual Holiday Program (ages 7 – 12). Luminescence works closely with Roland Peelman AM, a regular conductor, collaborator, and artistic mentor for the Chamber Singers.
Luminescence Chamber Singers have built an enviable reputation as a uniquely virtuosic ensemble, performing repertoire that spans renaissance polyphony, medieval music, contemporary art music, pop, and folk, and increasingly working across both amplified and unamplified forms. Recent highlights include sold-out performances at the National Museum of Australia (2024), Melbourne Recital Centre (2024), and Sydney Opera House (2023), and debut appearances in Hobart and Adelaide, including at The Festival of Voices (2024) and at ACO’s The Neilson (Pier 2/3). Across the 2023 – 2024 seasons, the ensemble recorded and released their first studio recordings, including music films of new works by Dan Walker and Jess Green, an EP of music by Leah Blankendaal (released with ABC Classics), and new works by and with composer/pianist Sally Whitwell, commissioned by the National Gallery of Australia. Luminescence’s debut album (Of The Body) was recorded in early 2024, and is scheduled forthcoming release with ABC Classic.
In addition to an increasingly national touring schedule, Luminescence has toured extensively through central west NSW with Music In The Regions (2023), as well as throughout the NSW South-Coast and southern highlands, including numerous residencies at Four Winds, Bermagui. Luminescence has appeared annually at Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF) since 2017. At the 2024 Canberra International Music Festival, Luminescence joined forces with 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow Hilary Geddes (electric guitar) and Freya Schack-Arnott (cello) to present Andrew Ford’s ‘Red Dirt Hymns’ for a capacity crowd. Since 2020, Luminescence has joined forces with CIMF to present annual mini-festival for the festive season,
Freya Schack-Arnott
Freya Schack-Arnott (DK/AUS) is a contemporary cellist and nyckelharpist who enjoys a multi-faceted career as a performer, improviser, composer and curator; ranging from contemporary classical repertoire to experimental, electronics, folk and popular art forms. Schack-Arnott regularly performs with Australia’s leading new music ensembles, including ELISION Ensemble (as core member) and Ensemble Offspring. As an improviser and composer, Schack-Arnott’s current projects include: ’Runa Cara’ (Scando/Irish folk duo) and ‘Bonniesongs’ with Bonnie Stewart, ‘FSA/BW’ (experimental string duo with bassist Benjamin Ward) and DK trio ‘Skaft Økse og Sav’.Freya is also co-founder and curator of the regular ‘Opus Now’ music series, an ongoing project exploring relationships between the music of today and classical string quartets.
Hilary Geddes
Hilary Geddes is a guitarist, improviser and composer based in Eora/Sydney on Gadigal Land. She is the 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow, a 2021 ABC Jazz Scholarship, and the 2019 recipient of the Jann Rutherford Memorial Award. Hilary is the bandleader of the Hilary Geddes Quartet, and released her debut album ‘Parkside’ (ABC Jazz) with the band in 2021.
Hilary works as an in-demand guitarist in the Australian jazz and improvised music scenes, performing alongside jazz luminaries such as Mike Nock, Lakecia Benjamin (USA) and Jonathan Zwartz. She holds the guitar chair in the large ensemble Pharos, is a member of Ellen Kirkwood’s Underwards, and Jeremy Rose’s Earshift Orchestra for the project ‘Disruption! The Voice of Drums’, which won an APRA Art Music Award in 2022. In 2023, she completed a successful tour of Germany with the Geddes/Haupt Quartet alongside bassist, Michael Haupt.
As a sound composer, Hilary was awarded the Tura Adapts: 2020 No Borders Commission for the multi-media work ‘Upstream, Down River’. Hilary was also a recipient of the Woollahra Municipal Council’s 2018/2019 Community and Cultural Grants Program, through which she was able to launch her soundmapping project SCAPES with a series of pop-up improvisations throughout the Woollahra precinct in March. These performances were recorded and will be released in the coming months.
Hilary also works in rock and contemporary music scenes, having performed with Tim Minchin in his album livestream in 2020. She is the lead guitarist in the garage-band, The Buoys (Arcadia Records), whose song ‘Lie to Me Again’ was voted number 85 in the 2021 triple j Hottest 100. They have performed at the Opera House as part of VIVID Festival, Splendour in the Grass, have supported bands such as Arctic Monkeys, Wolfmother, Hoodoo Gurus and the Dandy Warhols, and most recently supported Vacations on the UK leg of their tour. The Buoys’ 2024 debut album, LUSTRE landed at number 7 on the ARIA Australian Album charts, and number 6 on the ARIA Vinyl Charts.
In 2018, Hilary graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with First Class Honours, studying under renowned guitarists Carl Dewhurst, James Muller and Steve Brien. She also spent a year living in Germany, studying with esteemed guitarist, Andreas Wahl at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen during 2016 and 2017. After a competitive selective process, Hilary took part in the Australian Art Orchestra Creative Music Intensive in 2018, working and performing with artists such as Il Dong Bae, Daniel and David Wilfred and Sunny Kim.
Hilary is passionate about shared learning, collaboration and exploring different processes for improvisation. Over the past three years, her practice has centred around the possibilities of site-specific improvisation, soundmapping, and the role of place to inform listening/performance. On these aspects of her practice, Hilary received guidance from Vanessa Tomlinson, Cat Hope and Andrea Keller as part of the Australian Art Orchestra’s and Sydney Improvised Music Association’s 2020 mentorship programmes.
Roland Peelman
Born in Belgium, Roland Peelman has been active in Australia over 30 years as a conductor, pianist, artistic director and mentor to composers, singers and musicians alike. He has established a reputation as one of Australia’s most innovative musical directors, awarded with numerous accolades. On the sidelines, Roland remained active as a pianist, putting his fingers in the service of social activism, in particular Human Rights.
For his commitment to the creative arts in Australia, Roland has received numerous accolades, including the NSW Award for “the most outstanding contribution to Australian Music by an individual’ in 2005. In 2006 he was named ‘musician of the year’ by the Sydney Morning Herald and he has since featured regularly as one of the most influential people in the Australian arts scene. In 2020, Peelman was appointed an honorary Member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to music”, and in 2023 he was awarded the APRA Art Music National Luminary Award. Also the Belgian government has recognised his unique contribution, bestowing him with the title of ‘Commandeur in the Order of Leopold’ in 2023.
Over a period of 25 years, he transformed The Song Company into one of Australia’s most outstanding and innovative ensembles. In addition, he instigated and directed an impressive list of new work, orchestral, vocal, and operatic. Before his time with the Song Company, Roland worked with Opera Australia for seven years (1984-91). He was also the Music Director of Sydney Metropolitan Opera (1989-94), the Hunter Orchestra in Newcastle (1990-97), and until recently, the Artistic Director of the Canberra International Music Festival (2015 – 2024).
