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28 September 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Eighth Decade (2016-2026)

The eighth decade has been an unusual one in the choir’s history. 70th Birthday celebrations,
which had begun in June 2016 with ‘The Music Lives On’ concert, concluded in December
with ‘Rejoice’, a programme of Vivaldi’s ‘Gloria’, excerpts from Handel’s ‘Messiah’, and
Christmas carols. This concert opened with the audience and choir singing three carols
accompanied by Christopher Cook on the organ. The fourteen-piece chamber orchestra La
Fraternità di Solisti accompanied the choir in the Vivaldi and Handel. Artistic Director (and a
violinist) of La Fraternità, Gyula Cseszkó, had assumed, incorrectly, that he would be
conducting the entire performance. Jane, however, was firmly in control of all proceedings
and the orchestra had to adjust to a choral style of conducting…

Rear more about the eighth decade here.

28 September 2026

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Seventh Decade (2006-2016)

The choir enjoyed a period of stability in its seventh decade under the expert eye and directorship of Jane Elton Brown, who had also at this time taken on the role of Music Director at MacRobertson Girls’ High School. Seventy-five choristers sang in the 60th Anniversary Concert at the Glen Eira Town Hall auditorium on July 9, 2006, performing eighteen separate items, the composers ranging from Thomas Morley, through Mozart, Sibelius, Carl Orff and César Franck, to John Rutter. Nine choir members sang solos. The concert was divided into three sections, each encompassing twenty-years of choir history and presented by John Dunham, Stuart Allen and Joanna Leslie in turn. The performance had opened with Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’ and finished with John Rutter’s arrangement of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. It was followed by afternoon tea where choristers mingled with audience members….

Celebrating 80 Years of the Glen Eira City Choir: The Sixth Decade (1996-2006)

Caulfield City Choir Inc did not officially become Glen Eira City Choir Inc until July of 1996, and so the first concert to celebrate the choir’s 50th anniversary year, on the evening of June 3, was under the Caulfield name. This concert, titled ‘50 Golden Years’, was a collaboration with the South Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which was also celebrating fifty years of existence.

The choir’s contributions to the programme were Vivaldi’s ‘Gloria in D Major’, Schubert’s ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’, Brahms’ ‘O Schöne Nacht’, Fauré’s ‘Cantique de Jean Racine’, Verdi’s ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’, and Rutter’s ‘For the Beauty of the Earth’ and ‘A Gaelic Blessing’. The orchestra opened the concert with Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ and performed Franz Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’, as well as accompanying the choir.

Guest soprano, Lisette Wesseling, sang two solos as well as taking the solo soprano role in the Vivaldi, alongside the alto soloist and new choir conductor, Jennifer Mathers.

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.

17 December 2024

2024 in review… and looking forward to 2025

Karl Jenkins Requiem 22 June 2024 — Karl Jenkins – Requiem

Dear friends and choir members

We said our thank you’s, congratulations and farewells at our Christmas dinner last week. I would like to extend these messages to our larger group which includes our loyal audience also.

This year ‘s music was a challenge for the choir and we are proud of our performances of Karl Jenkins Requiem, with Bendigo Chorale and Benjamin Brittens A Ceremony of Carols at our Christmas concert. We thank our conductor Elena Varshavskaya, together with Berta Brozgul our accompanist Denise Grocke our Concert Manager together with Elena plan our program. Denise sources our outside musicians and the quality of these I have no doubt add to the high standard of our concerts,along with the St Andrews Anglican church as our venue.

We look forward to returning next year. Our committee work hard through the year, alongside our choir members who are always willing to assist. I list the committee now in recognition.

Vice president: Stuart Allen
Secretary Rosemary Hamer
Treasurer: John Dunham
Concert Manager: Denise Grocke
IT & so much more: Angela Alomes

We are singing ‘British music’ from the Renaissance to present day in our first concert in 2025. You are welcome to come and try us out. Reading music is an advantage. Thank you to those people who may have sung with us in the past but are no longer able. We love catching up with you after concerts. We look forward to the return of choristers unable to sing in 2025. And thank you again to our audience.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Glen Eira City Choir next meets on Monday 3 February at 7.30pm for 7.45pm start at St Andrews Church, New Street, Brighton.

Yours,
Penny Paton
President

27 July 2024

2024 Mid-Winter Update

Wow! what a busy 5 months Glen Eira City Choir has had, culminating in performing our Winter Concert – Karl Jenkins Requiem at St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Brighton on 22 June and then the following week at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, Bendigo. Rehearsals were held every week from February, with only a break for Easter Monday. For this concert Glen Eira City Choir again collaborated with Bendigo Chorale. We came together for a combined rehearsal with Bendigo Chorale and the musicians early in June. (Listen to the choir in rehearsal here and here)

In Requiem, a mass for the dead, Jenkins has inserted in between the traditional Latin texts movements with Japanese haiku ”death” poems, and used both traditional and modern musical styles. We were thrilled to perform and share this work with such large audiences in Brighton and Bendigo. Thank you to all those attended! You can listen to excerpts from the concert in Bendigo here – Dies Irae and the final movement In Paradisum

Monday following the concert we enjoyed our usual post-concert dinner in a new venue. It was great being able to move freely around the room to catch up with people.

Many thanks to Lisa Robinson, our soloist for the Karl Jenkins Requiem, for offering us a Voice Production & Vocal Exercise Class during our mid-winter break. Choristers and friends enjoyed learning about the anatomy of voice production and putting into practice various techniques. It was good to catch up again with choristers over tea/coffee afterwards.

During the break our conductor, Elena Varshavskaya, attended the Interkultur World Choir Games in Auckland NZ with Choral Studio Harmony, a children’s choir she also conducts. Congratulations to them on attaining Silver in the Young Children’s Choir section.

What’s next? Rehearsals for our Christmas Concert at St Andrew’s Brighton on Saturday 7 December commence on Monday 29 July. We will be performing Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, along with well known Christmas Carols.

***CANCELLED due to unforseen circumstances***And finally our joint annual Silent Movie Night fundraiser with Holy Trinity Balaclava & Elwood is on Saturday 10 August 7.00pm. Enjoy watching Silent Movie Comedies, including an original Buster Keaton and first Disney cartoons, accompanied by David Johnston OAM on on the Fincham Pipe Organ of Holy Trinity (175 Chapel Street – Cnr Brighton Rd – St Kilda 3182). Admission $25 U15 free

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