At the end of a triumphal tour through regional NSW, Luminescence Chamber Singers’ Red Dirt Hymns will come home to roost at The B, Queanbeyan, on Sunday.

As well as the top adult ensemble, the Luminescence Chamber Singers, the program features the Luminescence Children’s Choir, Music for Canberra and singers from the wider community, backed by Harley Coleman on electric guitar and cellist Freya Schack-Arnott.

The suite of 16 secular “hymns”, based by composer-broadcaster Andrew Ford on the work of 16 Australian poets, was performed at the National Museum in 2024 as part of the Canberra International Music Festival.

CityNews reviewer Sarah Byrne described it as, “one of the most purely enjoyable hours of music it’s been my pleasure to experience”.

It’s quite a coup for artistic director AJ America and her current line-up: sopranos Rachel Mink and Josephine Brereton, tenor Dan Walker, baritone Lucien Fischer, and bass-baritone Alasdair Stretch.

“We are particularly excited that we’ll be having a free workshop on Saturday afternoon where participants will learn five of the songs in the show and then join us in the performance the next day,” she says.

According to America, Ford is fairly laid-back about how his music – written variously in homage to art music, folk song, country ballad, Aussie rock and even a bit of Gilbert & Sullivan – is performed, although the unusual meters he adopted were part of the original commission.

“Andy’s idea was that the music could be flexible or adaptable… he wanted it to be sung in communities, not necessarily by professionals but by community choirs like those in his home country, England.”

Composed in a time of fire and emotional darkness, the hymns are in effect songs of awe and praise, dedicated not to a god, but to the land.

The penultimate number, To Whom Do We Sing, with words by Mark Wakely, is, America says, “a kind of an agnostic hymn”.

“We’ve rearranged some songs to give them a different feel, and it’s never the same twice,” she says.

As Byrne wrote after the premiere in 2024, “Red Dirt Hymns does what a hymnal is meant to do: it draws us closer – to each other.”

Luminescence Chamber Singers, Red Dirt Hymns, The B, Queanbeyan, November 16.