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Canberra is Calling to You - Jack Lumsdaine

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A song written and performed by Jack Lumsdaine celebrating Australia's capital city, Canberra.

Like a jewel so rare in a setting that’s fair

A city of white was born

With its gardens of blooms and its fair perfumes

That greet each sunny morn

Australia’s creation the heart of a nation

‘Neath azure skies of blue

Wherever you are, be it near of far

Canberra’s calling to you

Rolling Plains of the south land

Vast and wide and free

Wind swept grass waving restless

Green as the mighty sea

Our great Commonwealth Australia

Founded her new home

From God’s good earth there came the birth

Of our Capital our own

Like a jewel so rare in a setting so fair

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.

Enter the NFSA Our Statement of Reflection

Program: Canberra Drive

This unique song is filled with more than 70 suburbs of Canberra, can you hear all of them?

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Can you hear all 74 Canberra suburbs that are hidden in this ode to the ACT? 

Spaceman Africa created 'Catch Me If You Canberra', it's a song that metions almost all the parts of Canberra. 

He spoke with ABC Canberra's Kim Huynh about what inspired him to write the song and how he incorporated suburbs like Weston, Kaleen and Ngunnawal made it into the song, seamlessly. 

• Kim Huynh, Presenter
• Lottie Twyford, Producer
• Hinako Shiraishi, Producer

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Things to do in Canberra

Discover more than your typical getaway.

Canberra is home to iconic national museums and galleries, sprawling vineyards, Australian landmarks and Ngunnawal cultural sites, sweeping city vistas, and mountain bike trails weaving through forests. Find more than you expect in Canberra.

Museums and galleries

Canberra is well-known for its national attractions, but art lovers and history buffs in the know also love the city's local arts scene and heritage sites.

Outdoor adventures

Natural beauty is right on your doorstep in Canberra with popular lookouts, challenging hikes, and native animals in the wild. Discover waterfalls, gorges, forests, and snow-capped mountains just 45-minutes’ drive from the city at national parks and nature reserves.

Events and festivals

This year, Canberra is putting on a show with blockbuster exhibitions adding to our famed museums and galleries, plus events celebrating everything you love from floral masterpieces and Aussie artists to cricket and live music.

Search Canberra’s  event calendar  to find what’s on during your next trip to the capital.

First Nations' art, history and tours

Immerse yourself in some of the oldest and richest cultures in human history with the extensive collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and history at Canberra’s museums and galleries. Take a tour with a local Ngunnawal elder or try your hand at traditional First Nations practices during a workshop at the National Arboretum.

Canberra's wine district

Home to 140 vineyards and more than 40 wineries within 35 minutes’ drive of the city, Canberra's wine district is the perfect weekend getaway.  Find your new favourite drop as you visit cellar doors, meet the makers, and even stay overnight amongst the vines.

Foodie experiences

Canberra takes its foodie culture seriously. From award-winning coffee to long lunches and craft beers, tantalise your taste buds during your getaway to the capital.

From playing with snow in forests to Questacon's science wonderland, the kids will want to keep coming back each school holidays.

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Art Song Canberra

Bringing together people who enjoy the intimate, exquisite art of song

A most delicate program of early Italian baroque, with Anna Fraser and Hannah Lane...

Season of Song

Our annual program of seven concerts featuring local, national and international exponents of art song.

WELCOME TO ART SONG CANBERRA

Art Song Canberra is one of Australia’s leading organisations devoted to the regular performance and wide appreciation of classical art song. Our Season of Song is an annual series of fine vocal recitals by top-class singers and accompanists. Read more about us here .

WHAT IS ART SONG?

Karen Fitz-Gibbon sang with Alan Hicks for Art Song Canberra on 1st June 2014. As a semi-finalist in the 2014 Mietta Song Competition (she became a finalist), Karen made a short video about the nature of art song. The video tackles common objections to classical singing and is engaging viewing for anyone with an interest in music. To watch the video, click here .

Elly Ameling is one of the greats of art song. She produced an excellent series of videos “Some Thoughts on the Heart of Art Song” which can be accessed here .

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Songs of hope to fill National Museum for Canberra International Music Festival

Canberra vocal group Luminescence will perform the Red Dirt Hymns at the National Museum of Australia. Photo: Hillary Wardaugh.

A highlight at this year’s Canberra International Music Festival in May is bound to be the world premiere of Red Dirt Hymns – 16 Australian songs of hope – performed by local vocal group Luminescence.

Only celebrated composer and broadcaster Andrew Ford knows how the performance at the National Museum of Australia will start and end. And he’s fine with that, having given over his collection of “singable tunes” set to lyrics by Australian poets to be reimagined.

“I can’t wait to hear what they’ve done with them,” Andrew says.

In fact he wrote the songs so they could be reworked any which way and the results so far have excited him.

The original idea, including title, came from his wife, inspired by a musing from late poet Les Murray that he would like to write a hymn before he died.

It sat on the shelf for a while but it’s time arrived during the pandemic lockdowns when musicians, and in particular singers, were deprived of an audience and hope was in short supply.

“Of all the musicians affected by the lockdown, perhaps singers were the worst off,” Andrew recalls.

“Singers when they perform look at the audience and there was no audience, no-one to be companionable with.”

READ ALSO Law, politics and power: An uplifting new play exploring the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

He started emailing poets asking if they wanted to write a song with him, with only two instructions.

The words had to deal with the themes generally covered in hymns – courage, strength, facing and overcoming despair, gratitude, awe at nature, and of course hope – and the verse had to fit the song.

“I was trying to write simple, singable tunes that could be sung by anybody, untrained, amateurs, but could be picked up by a pop, jazz or classical singer to do anything they wanted to. But it would be simple, and memorable,” Andrew says.

“It’s not what contemporary classical music is about and it’s also not what contemporary poets do. They don’t on the whole do metre and rhyme which is what you need. Most poets don’t write song lyrics.”

The response surprised him. All up, there are now 20 of them – and that’s where he’s drawn a line.

“I didn’t set out to write 20 of them but it seemed a good place to stop,” he says.

Composer Andrew Ford: “I was trying to write simple, singable tunes that could be sung by anybody.” Photo: www.andrewford.net.au

He admits to some trepidation when asking distinguished poets to tweak a line here or there so they would fit the music. But they were all very gracious about it.

Despite being hymns, God doesn’t make an appearance although there was never any reason they couldn’t be religious. But that probably says something about contemporary poetry.

The songs may be simple but Andrew found the process challenging, being more familiar with composing orchestral works.

“Good songs tend to pop into your head, I might tweak them but if they’re proving intransigent it’s probably best to start again,” Andrew says, adding it’s partly a matter of luck if they work.

They were never set in stone and while he may have written them with accompaniment in mind, artists have used different instruments or none at all and rearranged them in ways that have amazed him.

“These arrangements that Luminescence are doing with [CIMF aritistic director] Roland Peelman – the bits I’ve heard and I dropped in for a half day of rehearsal in January – were amazing because they were nothing like I imagined. They were faster, or slower, or louder, or quieter, and had guitar and cello,” he says.

“A song that I had nominally written for voice, harp and guitar and drum was being done by six voices, cello and electric guitar.

“It was a completely different feel, and that for me is the really exiting piece of the project and always was – to see what would happen.”

READ ALSO Ralph Heimans’ NPG exhibition is a rare chance to see a masterful Australian artist at work

Accompanying Luminescence will be Hilary Geddes, 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow and lead guitarist of The Buoys, and cellist Freya Schack-Arnott.

Andrew says he doesn’t know the order in which they will be performed or what kind of narrative that will reveal.

“I’m interested to see what kinds of story it tells. But it will be their story as much as mine.”

Red Dirt Hymns , Thursday, 2 May, National Museum of Australia at 8pm. To learn more visit the festival website . The festival runs from 1-5 May.

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