Hundreds of Voices to Raise in Song for Boîte Millennium Chorus

Hundreds of voices to raise in song for Boîte Millennium Chorus-'Haven' concert, Sunday 20th August at 2.30pm, Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre
Goanna band's 1980s hit song Solid Rock performed in Pitjantjatjara by a 225-voice choir will be one of the many spine-tingling highlights of a most extraordinary and moving concert on Sunday 20th August at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The Boîte Millennium Chorus will perform its 20th concert, 'Haven', bringing songs from the Seychelles, Africa, East Timor, Chile, the Caribbean and Indigenous Australia to thousands of Melburnians.

This year, the songs selected for the concert include works composed and sung in English, Senegalese, Tsonga, Seychellois, Spanish, Tetum and Indigenous Australian (Yolngu and Pitjantjatjara) languages. Each song relates to the theme of 'Haven' through stories of seeking refuge and freedom, finding a home, falling in love, feeling safe, embracing change and nurturing hope.

In a massive undertaking, the hundreds of singers from Mallacoota in far east Victoria to Ballarat and Geelong in the west, from Albury-Wodonga in the north, Castlemaine, and the Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne in the south, gather for weekly rehearsals in their region for the three months leading up to the concert.

This concert celebrates the work of seven outstanding directors-Andrea Khoza, Jane Thompson, James Rigby, Stella Savy, Carl Pannuzzo, Penny Larkins and Geoffrey Williams-brought together under the guidance of Boîte director Roger King. The concert will also feature notable soloists and musicians from diverse backgrounds: Mitch Tambo, Jess Hitchcock, Sally Ford, Lamine Sonko, Darrel Belle, and Valanga Khoza.

Master storyteller, writer, human rights activist and much-loved Melbourne narrator, Arnold Zable will complement the concert with his insightful and surprising stories reflecting on the notion of 'haven'.

The repertoire includes the driving African-American gospel song Freedom Road, the gentle Mai Fali Eh, a Timorese song that calls children home at sunset, and Gurumul Yunupingu's sublime Marrandil, about running out to the tidal mud flats to catch shell fish. Our Home Our Land is Lou Bennett's anthem to country, to the land that nurtures us. Aladji, a West African song, sings of the importance of music, and uniting in our humanity. Chilean song Todo Cambia-everything changes-exhorts the listener to embrace life's vagaries. Shane Howard's anthem to Indigenous strength and fortitude, Solid Rock, features a rousing final two choruses sung in Pitjantjatjara, declaring that ''we are standing in the most sacred place... we have been standing the wrong way... the wind is blowing stronger... now we are standing the right way.''