Category: HIstory
Home / HIstory /
31 May 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Fifth Decade (1986-96)

The choir’s fifth decade did not start well. The 1986 performance of Verdi’s ‘Nabucco’ on the 11th of May, at the Camberwell Civic Centre, with the Camberwell Chorale and Camerata Orchestra, made a loss of $1200 ($4000 in today’s money), with each choir expected to take their share of the loss. This caused some mutterings about the viability of continuing with these combined concerts.

However, a joyous celebration of Caulfield City Choir’s 40th anniversary, took place on the 7th of September, at St Stephen’s Uniting Church Hall, in Balaclava Road. Titled ‘Caulfield’s Forty Years of Song’, the concert promised ‘a programme of nostalgia – favourite melodies and appealing choral items specially chosen from the Choir’s comprehensive repertoire to compliment these 40th Anniversary celebrations’….

Read more about the fifth decade of the choir here.

31 May 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Fourth Decade (1976-86)

We now enter a mini Dark Age in the choir’s history, with gaps in the records caused by mould damaging some documents beyond redemption. The main victims were Annual Reports and Committee Minutes but enough of these survive to give us an outline of what was going on during this decade, and more details can be gleaned from surviving concert programmes.

At the end of 1975, at the age of 33, Murray Brown had taken over the reins from David Plummer. In his letter of application for the position of conductor, Mr Brown had confessed to a liking for a broad range of music, ‘depending on quality, from plainsong to heavy rock’. The concert programmes from his time at the helm reflect this. While no heavy rock appears, in a concert with the title ‘America!’, in honour of the United States’ bicentenary, we find negro spirituals, plantation songs, ballads, works by Stephen Foster and Aaron Copeland, and Broadway musicals (Assistant Conductor, George Hadwen, was the soloist in ‘Ol’ Man River’). …

Read more about the fourth decade of the choir here.

24 March 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Third Decade (1966-76)

In 1966, its twentieth year, Caulfield City Choir performed in a staggering (and possibly, exhausting) twenty-one appearances. At the opening to the Moomba Festival, on a balmy evening, they joined the Box Hill, Sandringham, Postal Institute, and Dandenong Male Voice choirs and the RAAF Band in a concert of Gilbert and Sullivan excerpts, a programme they repeated later that year for the choir’s Twentieth Anniversary celebration in the Caulfield Town Hall. The Council gave support for this anniversary concert which was attended by a large audience of people associated with the choir over the years.

St Kilda City organist, the delightfully ecclesiastically named R.E.V. Church (Reginald Edward Victor), invited the choir to provide a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon (PSA) night programme at the St Kilda City Hall. The choir later performed a special Christmas programme at another PSA at Wesley Church in December.

Read more about the third decade of the choir here.

28 February 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Second Decade (1956-66)

The Caulfield City Choir celebrated its tenth year in 1956 with a party held at the Caulfield
Park Bowling Club, and its next decade followed the pattern firmly established during those
first ten years. There was only one Subscribers’ Concert each year now but, as in previous
years, the choir participated in the annual Four Choirs Festival held at the Melbourne Town
Hall (given the ‘less restricting name’ of The Choral Festival from 1965 onwards), entered
one or two eisteddfods each year, regularly performed at the Caulfield Council’s ANZAC
commemorations, Carols by Candlelight and Naturalisation ceremonies, gave several
concerts every year at small local venues (for which the choir charged £5/5- per
appearance), could be heard singing on a couple of ABC radio broadcasts each year, and
cheered up patients at the Convalescent Hospital once or twice a year with song and
socialising.

Read more about the second decade of the choir here

2 February 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The First Decade (1946-56)

This year we will celebrate 80 years of the Glen Eira City Choir (formerly Caulfield City Choir and before that the City of Caulfield Philharmonic Society). Our secretary, Rose Harmer has been delving into the archives…

OUR CHOIR – 80 YEARS IN THE MAKING
The First Decade (1946-56)

The Glen Eira City Choir came into being in 1946 under the name of the City of Caulfield Philharmonic Society. David Plummer, its first conductor, was an energetic man, a talented and well-connected musician, and a leader full of enthusiasm and ambition for his new choir. The original advertisement for members stated that the aim of the choir was ‘to foster the love of choral singing and provide opportunities both for our own enjoyment and to help worthy causes.’ The repertoire was to include ‘part songs, glees, madrigals, folk songs, shanties, choruses, etc., for general purpose programmes. Then, some larger compositions and competition work.’ The City of Caulfield Philharmonic Society was a founding member of the Choral Association of Victoria, and David Plummer served as its Vice-President for many years.

Read more about the first decade of the choir here.

Glen Eira City Choir 2026