Australian Girls Choir 40th Anniversary Reception

CEO of the Australian School of Performing Arts and Australian Girls Choir, Ms Nicole Muir AM; choristers; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.

I begin by acknowledging the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Jagera and Turrbal people, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging and to any First Nations people here this afternoon.

Graeme and I are delighted to welcome the Australian Girls Choir team back to Government House. A year ago, we hosted a morning tea for AGC and their sister choir, The Girls from Oz, and we’re very pleased that the girls can be here again this year together with their parents, supporters, choir alumni, and the dedicated leaders and staff of the choir and the Australian School of Performing Arts.

Forty years is a certainly a milestone worth celebrating, and Graeme and I are both looking forward immensely to Sunday’s anniversary concert in the QPAC Concert Hall; but today we will all have the pleasure of hearing performances of two songs that, for me, are a perfect distillation of the spirit and founding ethos of this choir – My Island Home and You Raise Me Up.

Australians first heard the Warumpi Band singing My Island Home just two years after the establishment of the Australian Girls Choir 38 years ago.

A poignant song of the longing of the saltwater people for their island homeland in the Northern Territory, it touched us all; and today, almost four decades on, it remains a proud anthem of cultural identity for our First Nations people.

It is particularly pleasing that My Island Home has been chosen for today’s celebration because it recognises The Girls from Oz, the Indigenous sister choir which has performed alongside the Australian Girls Choir since 2010, as well as the exceptional outcomes of involvement in the choir for both the girls themselves and their communities.

I am also very pleased that the choir has chosen You Raise Me Up as the companion performance piece today.

It’s almost a quarter of a century since this song was first released, but it has become a song for our time, expressing the importance of support and encouragement, and the power of spiritual and personal relationships in difficult times. To me, it is not at all surprising that its haunting Celtic melody and simple but inspiring lyrics have become a favourite in the choir repertoire – helping girls and young women to achieve resilience and confidence is fundamental to the underpinning AGC philosophy.

When Judith Curphey started rehearsing those first 150 girls in Melbourne in 1984, she wanted to challenge the accepted convention that ‘boys sing better than girls’, and create a female choir with a uniquely Australian sound and high artistic standards.

Now aged 95, Judith was a passionate pioneer who was not afraid to dream big dreams, but I doubt that she ever imagined that her vision would one day be taken even further through the establishment of the Australian School of Performing Arts and the The Girls from Oz, or that in 2024, there would be more than 6,000 girls learning to sing, dance and perform across Australia, as well as an international chapter in Singapore.

It is a remarkable success story, and it is with great admiration and delight I congratulate you on 40 fabulous years – and many more to come.  Happy 40th anniversary!