Singing to their city

Last year, the Canberra Choral Society presented The Best Choral Music Ever Written by an Australian with a Canberra Connection.

Its purpose was self-explanatory and CCS artistic director Tobias Cole says it received ''a lot of very positive response. It was fantastic so many composers came to the concert''.

''It was great to have composers performing too, singing in ensembles or playing an instrument.''

So well was the concert received that CCS is building on the same idea, only this time with a much shorter title. Canberra Voices is a new program of choral music by composers with strong links to Canberra. As with last year, performing with the Canberra Choral Society and its youth choir, New Voices, there will be another youth choir, Kompactus, the Turner Trebles (a choir of boys and girls) and the adult choir Luminescence - making for a total of more than 100 voices.

Cole says, ''One of the works we did last year was a section of a mass by Anthony Smith, pianist and composer, so it seemed fitting we should premiere the whole mass.''

The work, A Latin Mass, has a double meaning in its title - it's in Latin and is South American in its rhythms - and is being performed with Smith at the piano.

''It's the feature piece of the program.''

Daniel Brinsmead is the director of Luminescence and he will conduct them in two of his pieces, Come Sleep (that won an award to get it recorded in Abbey Road Studios) and Locus iste.

Also present will be Sally Greenaway, who will be performing Stay Awhile and an arrangement for unaccompanied voices of Waltzing Matilda.

As well, Olivia Swift will be singing in her piece Snow and Calvin Bowman will perform with his setting of Kenneth Slessor's poem Beach Burial.

And some composers will be represented by works but not present at the performance, including Sally Whitwell and Ruth Lee Martin.

Cole will be singing a solo in Martin Wesley Smith's Caterpillar of Society, a section of Smith's larger work Boojum, and will also lead a singalong after Greenaway's version of Waltzing Matilda.

And there will be more to discover.

''We're going to make a feature of the venue,'' Cole says.

The audience will stay put while the performers sing in different locations, sometimes from behind them, even from outside. Cole says this won't be the last such concert.

''I think we're pretty committed to celebrating and featuring Canberra composers,'' he says.