In 2016 we sang the six-part O salutaris hostia, one of William Byrd’s most harmonically piquant pieces, in the cavernous acoustics of the Crypt of Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral, as part of an Eastertime triptych of old and new polyphony, In tempore Paschali. Making Tracks has felt very timely-in 2022’s Songs From The Heart we sang of 'walking tracks of Country' in this album we leave our tracks from the last seven exhilarating years. The Song Company was established in 1984 Antony picked up the baton from Roland Peelman, and before him, John Grundy and The Song Company’s founding father, Charles Colman. Our vocal repertoire on Tracks ranges from Byrd and Bruckner’s choral classics via solo song-including a traditional drinking song and a beautiful movement from Messiaen’s virtuosic song-cycle, Harawi-to staged and multichoral extracts by Antony Pitts, our Artistic Director during this fertile period of the ensemble’s long and noteworthy history.

New music is further represented by Alice Chance’s untitled contribution to Nineteen to the Dozen and by Heather Percy’s loving tribute to Bruckner’s Locus iste.

The album opens and closes with short masterpieces by William Byrd, whose 400th anniversary falls this year (he died in 1623), and looks both back to the distant past with dramatic and ecstatic music from the 12th century by Hildegard of Bingen and Magister Pérotin, and to the future with brand-new commissions from two Australian Indigenous composers, Elizabeth Sheppard and Sonya Holowell, inspired by the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Tracks is a curated collection of mostly live recordings from each of The Song Company’s seven touring seasons from 2016 to 2022, compiled from our discography along with four previously unreleased tracks-culminating in a significant world première by one of Australia’s most distinguished composers, Ross Edwards.

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