ARTIST PROFILES
ADELAIDE CHAMBER SINGERS
Adelaide Chamber Singers has been an energetic and innovative contributor to music making in Adelaide for over twenty years. Formed in 1985 by its Artistic Director and Conductor Carl Crossin (who was awarded an OAM in the 2007 Australia Day Honours List for his services to music), the ensemble comprises some of Adelaide's best and most experienced ensemble singers, some of whom are also soloists, emerging artists and/or conductors in their own right. Adelaide Chamber Singers has built a substantial reputation wherever it has performed and is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading chamber choirs.
Adelaide Chamber Singers has toured within Australia on several occasions and has performed at a number of Australia's major festivals including: the Barossa International Music Festival, the Melbourne International Festival, the Perth International Festival and the Australian National Choral Association’s Choralfest. ACS has also participated in almost every Adelaide Festival of Arts since 1994. Regional festivals also feature in the ACS itinerary: the ensemble has performed at most of the Coriole Festivals in recent years and, in 2004, performed at the Coonawarra Festival.
Adelaide Chamber Singers has also undertaken six international tours: Britain and Norway (1996), Britain (1999), Singapore (2001), the USA (2002), Japan (2004), and Canada, the USA and England (2006). On previous international tours, Adelaide Chamber Singers has given highly acclaimed performances at the 2004 Tokyo International Performing Arts Festival, 1999 Norfolk and Norwich Festival; the 10th Annual National Convention of the Association of British Choral Directors in 1996; and was Australia’s representatives at both the Asia South Pacific Symposium on Choral Music in Singapore in 2001 and at the 6th World Symposium on Choral Music in the USA in 2002.
While on its 6th international tour in 2006, ACS was honoured with the award of "Choir of the World at Kathaumixw 2006" at the prestigious International Choral Kathaumixw ('Ka-thow-mew' - a Salish Indian word meaning “a coming together of different peoples”) in British Columbia, Canada. Adelaide Chamber Singers also performed at the International Choral Festival in Missoula in the Rocky Mountains of Western Montana, USA, and completed its most substantial tour to date with performances in the Church of St. Martin in the Fields in London and the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge - the latter being part of the 2006 Cambridge Summer Music Festival.
ACS has established a highly successful relationship with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in recent years and has taken part in major performances of works as diverse as Jonathan Mills’ Sandakan Threnody, Mozart’s Requiem and Peter Sculthorpe’s Requiem.
Peter Sculthorpe’s Requiem for choir, didgeridoo and orchestra was recently released on ABC Classics with the Adelaide Chamber Singers, William Barton and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arvo Volmer, and was selected as an Editor’s Choice in the July 2007 edition of the prestigious Gramophone magazine. The ACS recording (with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra) of Ross Edwards’ Symphony No. 4 ‘Star Chant’ won the Australian Music Centre’s award for ‘Best Choral/Orchestral Recording for 2008’. In the 2007 Adelaide Film Festival, ACS performed Arvo Pärt’s Passio with musicians from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Theatre of Voices and internationally recognised Pärt specialist, Paul Hillier.
Adelaide Chamber Singers made its film debut in 2003 in Paul Cox’s “Human Touch”. The film, starring Jacqueline McKenzie, Aaron Blabey and Chris Haywood, featured at International Film Festivals in Melbourne, Toronto and Montreal before opening in ‘arthouse’ cinemas around the Australia in April 2005. The film is now commercially available on DVD as a Dendy release.
Adelaide Chamber Singers is proud of its on-going association with Neville Clark and Disk Edits, and gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Music Board of the Australia Council, the Commonwealth Government’s Arts funding and advisory body, and the South Australian Government through ARTS SA.
Contact us at
admin@adelaidechambersingers.com or visit our website at
www.adelaidechambersingers.com
