This varied program celebrates the musical heritage of South Brisbane and its public venues. Until the formation of the Greater Brisbane City Council in 1925, South Brisbane had the status of an independent municipality, as signified by its Municipal Chambers. Similarly, the nearby South Brisbane Technical College, which later functioned as a library and auditorium, hosted many civic and social events and performances. The Chambers was built in the early 1890s, but it only became a concert hall when the Queensland Conservatorium opened there in 1957. Situated just one mile away near the Victoria Bridge was the Cremorne Theatre, which after opening in 1911 became a hugely popular venue for vaudeville and other entertainments. Local churches such as St Andrew’s Anglican Church also had a fine musical tradition.

 

Our program features music once heard in each of these venues, from Victorian and Edwardian salon songs to music by local composers. Popular numbers by Billy Maloney, one of Brisbane’s most successful entertainers, epitomise the ‘roaring 20s’. We also present vocal selections from a 1933 concert by alumni of the Brisbane High School for Girls, renamed at the time of its relocation to South Brisbane as Somerville House. In recognition of the wartime presence of the American armed forces, which commandeered the school campus and The Chambers, we feature some songs by Johnny Nauer, a young GI who was posted here. Finally, we honour the Queensland Conservatorium’s founding with a work by its first director William Lovelock, and other piano and vocal music performed in the late 1950s by distinguished staff and students.

 

In all, a celebration of the rich musical and architectural heritage of South Brisbane, presented with the support of Somerville House in the elegant setting of The Chambers - a building with a fascinating history.

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Repertoire:

 

Songs by local composers:

                Australian anthem – Richard Thomas Jefferies

                The fisher boy – William Arthur Caflisch

                The absent-minded beggar – Esther Lewin

 

Salon songs from the Victorian and Edwardian eras:

                A summer night – Arthur Goring Thomas

                Let me love thee – Luigi Arditi

                Beloved, it is morn – Florence Aylward

                The swallows – Frederic Hymen Cowen

 

Opera excerpts, Lieder and artsong:

                Flühlingsgefühl (Spring feelings) – Anton Rubinstein

                One spring morning - Ethelbert Nevin 

                Il faut partir (I must depart) from La fille du regiment – Gaetano Donizetti

                The Starling – Liza Lehmann

 

Music hall songs heard at the original Cremorne Theatre:

                When the Prince of Wales arrives in town – Billy Maloney

                Calling Cooee – an Australian fox-trot by Harold Middleton

                In-doo-roo-pilly – a tongue-twisting waltz-song by Billy Maloney

 

American songs from World War Two:

                The Aussies and the Yanks are here – Johnny Nauer

                Say a prayer - Nauer

                I found a Princess in Queensland – Nauer

 

Songs and partsongs performed during the Queensland Conservatorium’s early years:

                The blackbird – partsong by William Lovelock

                Gruss (Greeting) – duet by Felix Mendelssohn

                To the evening star – Nigel Butterley

                Go not, happy day – Frank Bridge

                Selections from Eight new nursery rhymes – Henry Walford Davies

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*Map of The Chambers Location*