College Life

The Choir

The Choir of Newman College was established at the beginning of 2002, under the direction of Dr Gary Ekkel, to serve as the chapel and concert choir of Newman College. The Choir consists of eighteen voices, comprising five sopranos, four altos, four tenors and five basses, together with the College Organist, David Macfarlane. The Choir also has up to four string scholars.

To view information about the Choir Concert Series, please click here.

To view recorded choir performances, please click here.

The principal aims of the choir are to provide leadership in liturgical music within Australia, to promote choral music through performances of uncompromising excellence and to provide the skills and training which will allow choristers to become choral leaders.

The Choir participates in a Choral Eucharist on each Sunday during the Academic Term and in a Compline service once per month on a Thursday night. The Choir sings extensively in a number of services during Holy Week and in the Newman College Carol Service, held on the first Sunday of December.

The Choir’s Concert Series comprises three concerts per year held in the magnificent acoustics of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit and the College Dining Hall. Highlights of past concert series have included Christmas at Versailles, a dinner-concert in collaboration with Maggie Beer, a reconstruction of J.S. Bach’s lost St Mark Passion, three productions of Medieval plays, a performance of Tallis’s forty-voice Spem in alium, and a number of projects in combination with exponents of Early Music and World Music.

Choir Concert Series

Choral Scholarships

Each position in the choir will attract a scholarship as an acknowledgment of the required commitment and standard expected of each chorister.

Auditions

Choral Scholarships and membership of the Choir of Newman College are awarded by audition. Candidates will be required to prepare one choral item and one solo item for their audition. It is highly recommended that they secure their own accompanist for the audition. In addition candidates will receive a series of sight-reading, aural and singing exercises.

Value of Scholarships

As a Newman resident and a member of the Choir, you will be awarded a $4,000 scholarship. Choristers and instrumentalists need to reside in the College for the full year in order to receive a residential choral scholarship.

Furthermore, the College gives all choral scholars the opportunity to develop their vocal skills and encourages this by providing a $330 contribution towards vocal tuition.

To apply for a Scholarship, please download the relevant forms below. For further information, please telephone the College Office at (+61 3) 9347 5577.

Choral Scholarship and Application Form Principal Choral Scholar Scholarship and Application Form

The Choir of Newman College Recordings:

“Luceat lux vestra” Centenary Recording (1918-2018)

To celebrate the College’s one-hundredth year, the Choir of Newman College has made a beautifully-produced Centenary recording. Taking its title from the College’s motto, ‘Let your light shine’, the recording brings to prominence music written over the last five-hundred years for Jesuits courts, institutions and chapels, and settings of texts by Jesuit poets and John Henry Newman, the theologian after whom the College is named. Featured on the recording are anthems and motets by Palestrina, Charpentier, Rameau, Zelenka, Benjamin Britten, Edward Elgar and Christopher Willcock, several recorded for the first time.

“Behind Closed Doors”

The Choir of Newman College’s first commercial CD recording, features music written and sung under the increasing threat of persecution in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The Choir is accompanied by the Australian viol ensemble, Consort Eclectus, and the College Organist, David Macfarlane.

Behind closed doors CD cover