Choir unveils the sacred through forgotten madrigals
This article was first published in The Melbourne Anglican on 5 November 2025.
A parish church will host Melbourne’s first-ever live performance of rare Palestrina music to mark the 500th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Palestrina’s music is a mainstay of traditional liturgical music, but his sacred madrigals are largely unknown.
Madrigals were a form of popular unaccompanied vocal music in the Renaissance.
Chorus Ecclesiae Australia, a choir that performs rare sacred music, will introduce Melbourne to these works through their concert at St John’s East Malvern in November.
Chorus Ecclesiae creative director Shanti Michael said their mission was to uncover music people might not have heard and enable churches to experience it in the liturgy.
She believed it was important to protect this music as a living heritage and there was no argument about replacing it with something more contemporary or vice versa.
“You can’t throw away music just because it’s old, and you can’t say don’t create contemporary music, either,” she said.
Ms Michael said the choir wanted to contribute to the unveiling of the sacred and saw their performance as evangelism through beauty.
“We just don’t do it with drums and the guitar,” she said. “We do it with our voices.”
The choir also gave singers opportunities to hone their skills and perform, she said, and it made sense to have the concert at St John’s because the parish was an early supporter of Chorus Ecclesiae.
St John’s vicar Alexander Ross said the parish had always valued music and the gift of creativity.
He said music was core to the parish mission of glorifying God in worship, through the St John’s choir and their organists.
There had been an increasing number of musicians approaching the church wanting to use it for concerts, and Dr Ross said the concerts had grown in an organic way.
The church recently launched their Finch Street Concerts, named for the street on which the church stands, which Dr Ross said was a part of a broader project to give to the local community.
Concert coordinator and saxophonist Justinn Lu hoped the concerts would give local classical musicians more opportunities to perform.
His saxophone quartet was currently giving free concerts at St John’s as a part of the parish’s artists in residence program.
He said many young musicians were only taught how to play their instruments, not how to develop professional networks that would create performance opportunities.
Mr Lu was excited to be a part of creating a community for musicians in East Melbourne.
“I’ve never done something like this,” he said. “I hope people will be more open or relaxed just coming along to concerts.”
Featured image: Chorus Ecclesiae performing at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo. Picture: Supplied
For communications strategy and services contact Key Change Communications. Follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn.
