Reviews: Sydney Chamber Choir's Dance | Chant – Celebrating Ross Edwards
Sydney Morning Herald
Ross Edwards: Fitting celebration of a beloved composer
Peter McCallum | 5 August 2018
The opening phrase of the first work, Dance Mantra, a short celebratory choral piece from 1992, captured something of the essence of Ross Edwards' music – deftly quiet voices, nimble rhythms like the flitting of insects and an imaginary ritual all coming together to create a light ecstasy of spirit.
The concert celebrating the much-loved composer's 75th year, jointly presented by Sydney Chamber Choir and the City Recital Hall, with Synergy percussion concert, was true to Edwards' characteristic humility, with more pieces by others than by Edwards himself.
Limelight
Dance Chant : Celebrating Ross Edwards (City Recital Hall, Sydney Chamber Choir)
Steve Moffatt | 6 August 2018
“I’m a person who puts dots on paper and I am slightly bedazzled by all this attention.” So said a typically modest Ross Edwards, Australian classical music’s most performed and arguably most popular contemporary composer, who turns 75 later this year.
For 40 of those years he has composed pieces for two of this country’s finest ensembles, Sydney Chamber Choir and Synergy, the percussion ensemble collective, but he is most famous for the worldwide TV broadcast of his Dawn Mantras with a young girl chorister perched atop the Sydney Opera House sails to sing in the new Millennium.
classikON
Celebrating Ross Edwards' 75th Birthday
Tony Burke | 7 August 2018
Birthday invitations are not to be sneezed at and it was a privilege to be part of a celebration of Ross Edwards's seventy-fifth year at City Recital Hall. He is probably Australia's best known contemporary composer with Peter Sculthorpe no longer with us and has continued the tradition of invoking sounds of native Australis, human and otherwise, in his music.
Sydney Arts Guide
Dance Chant : Celebrating Ross Edwards @ City Recital Hall
Paul Nolan | 8 August 2018
DANCE CHANT : CELEBRATING ROSS EDWARDS was a supremely entertaining event which was significant on several levels. The evening celebrated the unique voice and a portion of the prolific output of this composer in his 75th birthday year. And who better to deliver this tribute concert than Sydney Chamber Choir, which has enjoyed a productive and close relationship with Edwards and so many Australian composers in the past.
CutCommon
LIVE REVIEW // Mark goes to Ross Edwards’ 75th birthday gig
Mark Bosch | 8 August 2018
The greatest strength of Saturday night’s Dance Chant was its unbroken appeal to reverence. Reverence for one of the most inimitable voices in Australian music, Ross Edwards, certainly. But also reverence for a God, for the Earth, and — as a joint presentation by Sydney Chamber Choir and Synergy Percussion — for the two most ancient forms of music making.
Sounds Like Sydney
Concert Review: Dance | Chant Celebrating Ross Edwards / Sydney Chamber Choir
Wendy McLeod | 7 August 2018
This concert celebrated the unique voice of composer Ross Edwards as he approaches his 75th birthday in December. The Sydney Chamber Choir gave a mesmerising account of musical vignettes by both Edwards and composers who inspired him, shaping his distinctive style and characteristic sound world.
