The Choir is holding its ANZAC Revue at ANZAC Day, Thursday 25th April, 7pm, at the Dunedin Knox Church. The Mosgiel Brass Band will be joining the choir, playing some of their items and also playing for some of our choir items. Our other two guests, our two Scholars Kieren Kelly and Jesse Hanan, will also present one of their items and sing some songs with the choir.

The programme includes some well-loved items such as Finlandia, Homeward Bound and Bridge over troubled Waters as well as some new songs. Come and join us for a fitting finish to this years ANZAC celebrations.

Tickets for sale at the door before the concert – cash only!  Adults $25, Students/Children $15.

The choir will bring a stunning selection of songs. There will be quite a variety that are mostly well-known, including: I Vow to Thee my Country, Bring Him Home from Les Miserable, When I’m 64 (adapted to 94 as being more appropriate for many choir members), Ghost Riders in the Sky, The Rose, and Battle Hymn of the Republic. In addition, to reflect Armistice Day, there will be a Remembrance Section during which the choir will sing the moving songs, Blades of Grass and Anthem from Chess. We are also privileged to present 2 of our 3 RSA Choir Scholars and an exciting well-known trumpeter, Ralph Miller.

Our scholars are superb soprano Rosie Auchinvole and accomplished tenor Kieran Kelly.

At the St. Patrick’s Basilica, 40 Macandrew Road, South Dunedin.

The choir organises this concert to give all our current choir scholars the opportunity to perform a selection of songs of their liking in front of a bigger audience and sing some items with the choir.  

For you, the audience, it is an excellent opportunity to come and listen to these excellent singers, listen to great music, and enjoy seeing how their voices get better and better over the years they are studying at the Otago University.  

The choir will also sing a small selection of songs from their repertoire.

Please come and enjoy listening to these emerging stars.

The theme for this concert is Matariki. The choir will sing some new songs and some familiar once. This will be the first concert our new scholar, Dom Edmond will be singing for us. We also will have Boudewijn Keenan who was the overall winner in this year’s Dunedin Concerto competition playing his Cello and Cameron Monteith, also a finalist in the same competition, playing the piano.

Please note, all tickets are $20 purchased on the day, at the door. Cash sale only!

We are looking forward to seeing you there.

The Choir is holding its ANZAC Revue at 7pm at the Dunedin Knox Church. The choir will present a mixture of well-liked older songs such as Highland Cathedral and Battle Hymn of the Republic, as well as some new songs such as He Honore, he Kororia and Our Song by Elton John. 

We also have an exciting list of Guest Artists: International Soprano Rebecca Ryan, Soprano Calla Knudson, Otago Girls and Otago Boys High School Choirs, David Burchell on the Organ, Ralph Miller on the Trumpet, Murray Tannock playing the Bagpipes, Sam Coutts the Drums and The Knox Church Children’s choir will also sing items with the choir.

Tickets are for sale at the Regent Theatre or cash only at the door before the concert.  Adults $25, Students/Children $15

Attending our ANZAC Revue in the evening of ANZAC day, will be a great finish to the country’s ANZAC celebration.

To purchase tickets over the internet from the Regent Theatre, go to the HOME page and click on the link button below the concert poster!

Access to Knox Church is currently very restricted due to the ongoing roadwork in George Street. If you are coming by car, make certain you are coming early in order to find a carpark in the streets around the Knox Church grounds. There is also no space for buses to park within the Knox Church grounds.

The concert will be held on Armistice Day, Friday evening, 11th November, 7pm in the Knox Church, 499 George Street, Dunedin.

The choir will present Karl Jenkin’s “The Armed Man - Mass for Peace” in the Knox Church with David Burchell on the Organ, members of the St. Kilda Brass Band, the Knox Church Choir, the Knox Church Children choir and University of Otago Performance Students.

As for previous years, the choir is singing in the Dunedin Railway Station Foyer for the opening of the Dunedin Art Society ’’Edinburgh Premier Arts Awards”. The choir will present a selection of songs from their current repertoire and if available, one of the Scholars will provide soloist support and will present two or three of their own items.

Guests will be Ralph Miller on the trumpet, David Burchell on the Organ, Robert Craigie on percussion and Alexander McAdam Soloist.

In keeping with the current Covid climate and regulations the Revue will be just over One hour long with no interval. For the audience masks are required.

You can purchase your tickets from Neville Carr by email nevcarr@gmail.com. We also will sell tickets before the concert at the Venue, St Paul’s Cathedral. Please come to the Stuart Street level entrance door to get your ticket. Unfortunately. In order to make certain you get a seat, purchase your tickets from Neville Carr now!

A good variety programme awaits you! Come and be taken away for an hour from the daily routine by listening to great music!

The choir will sing some great, well-known items such as Shenandoah, The Lord’s Prayer, Deep Peace, Gwahoddiad, Sanctus from Karl Jenkins and Anthem from Chess as well as some new items such as I have a dream, Feeling Good and O Fortuna - Carmina Burana.

Guests David Burchell, Ralph Miller, Alexander McAdam and Robby Craigie will enhance the evening with their performances.

Please come reasonably early if you still need to get your tickets and do not forget to bring your Covid masks so everyone stays save.     

The choir will be singing in the Railway Station Foyer for the public coming to attend the Arts Awards. Emma McClean will sing some solo parts for the choir and will also sing some of her own items.

The RSA Choir will be joining in with Knox Choir and others in a Peace Liturgy recalling the detonation of the two nuclear weapons at the end of WW2. We will be singing a few well-known pieces and assisting in parts of Faure’s Requiem.

Centennial Concert -

ANZAC Revue on ANZAC day, Sunday 25th April 2021 - Town Hall - 6.30pm

Ticket sale opens Monday 22nd March, Tickets $ 30.00, at Regent Theater ($2.00 booking fee per ticket applies) or on www.ticketmaster.co.nz ($8.00 fee per transaction applies). - Door sales 1 hour before the concert.

Musical Director: Karen Knudson - Accompanist:

- Compere: Rhiannon Cooper

Guests: Mosgiel Brass Band - Bennett School of Dance - Organist David Burchell - Soloists Scott Bezett, Lillian Gibbs, Emma McClean, Alexander McAdam - Trumpet Ralph Miller - Drums Robbie Craigie - Bagpipes Murray Tannock - Bass Drums Sam Coutts

The ANZAC Revue will also be our Centenary Concert. We were going to have our Centenary Concert at last years ANZAC day Revue, however due to the Covert - 19 virus close down, this was not possible.

This Revue is a real celebration. We are going to enjoy ourselves and we know you and your friends (do bring some) will enjoy it immensely. There will be some old favourites to stir us and some new songs to inspire us. There will be songs that reflect our origins: we began as the Dunedin Returned Soldiers Choir; first concert in 1920. Now, as the Dunedin Returned Services Choir (RSA Choir) we face the future in hope and anticipation. To demonstrate this, we are presenting a wide range of songs; songs that are poignant, topical, funny (we hope!) and climactic. There will be beautiful harmony and powerful sound. Some of the songs are original, written and composed just for our Choir. We will CELEBRATE! Join us and share with us as we do so. Our Choir is unique in the heritage we reflect. We are not copying others, as good as they might be. Over the years we have developed our own style and particularly so under our Director, Karen.

It is a delight to have a very recent Choir Scholar leading the proceedings as our compere. She didn’t really have a fair go singing with us because of the Covid-19 lockdown, but now this very talented young lady, Rhiannon Cooper, will front our Centennial programme. Each year the Choir offers a three-year Scholarship to a classical voice student from the Music Department of the University of Otago. We find this a wonderful association, with the expectation that they will have performance experience before a large audience and showcase their talents. Our three current scholars will all be performing at stages throughout the programme. They are Lillian Gibbs, Emma McClean and Alexander McAdam. We are privileged to have them contribute.

A highlight of our Revue will be the participation of the extremely popular and community active Mosgiel Brass Band. They will have their own bracket immediately after the interval and will accompany us in several of our songs.

Another WOW factor will be our wonderful pipe organ, Norma, played by maestro and City Organist, David Burchell. When you have Norma, the Brass Band, our pianist, and a male choir in full voice there will be a sound that will thrill you and which you will carry home with you, the memory maybe lasting for years. Ralph Miller will also add his trumpet to this combination, and also in our Ceremony of Remembrance. Drums and bagpipes will be played at times by Robbie Craigie, Sam Coutts, and Murray Tannock.

A young baritone from Lee Stream, who has trained in the Music Department, University of Otago, will be performing with the choir in several items and will also have a solo bracket. He is Scott Bezett, a singer with a very promising future.

We will also be entertained by the Bennett School of Dance. This highly respected School teaches a variety of dance forms and we wait in anticipation for what we shall see.

A new song has been composed by Karen to words written by her mother, Dorothy Knudson. The song is a cry for protection in battle from a daughter for her father, who fought on and won a medal for bravery. Our other new song is in a different category altogether and trumps our efforts at comedy. The wording here gives a clue to the connection. Our scholars assist with this.

Our other songs are ones we have enjoyed singing previously and we know you will enjoy listening to them again. In addition, we will sing a wonderful arrangement of a popular Maori song.

We hope you feel inspired by the prospects and we thank our wonderful conductor, Karen Knudson, for the inspiration she gives us to sing to you.

An attractive Centennial souvenir programme with much additional detail will be handed out on the night of the concert.

Armistice Day Concert

 A combined concert by the St Kilda Brass and the Dunedin RSA Choir

Wednesday 11th November 2020 – 7pm at Knox Church, Dunedin

Tickets: No pre-sale – Tickets available before the concert from 6pm onwards.

Cash only! $ 20 per person, Students and Children $ 10.

We are incredibly pleased to be in concert again.  With all the Covid restrictions, there has been little time for rehearsal.  However, combining our concert with St Kilda Brass, we can promise you a very exciting musical treat and we hope you are filled with anticipation after an absence of choral offerings from us for a year.  It will not only be exciting with the Brass, and the Organ, and our still strong male voices, there will be some moving and nostalgic moments while some of the songs that are played and sung relate to that tragic and destructive World War of 1914-18.

We do have a talented young singer, Alexander McAdam assisting us and enhancing some of our songs.  He has been trained by Gladys Hope and looks to have a promising future.  In the recent Newzcats Cleveland Contemporary Solo Awards for high-school-age singers, he received a commendation.  His father John is a St Kilda Brass player.

Jeremiah Clarke from the 17th century composed a trumpet voluntary that is well known and still very popular.  The choir will put everything into this to give it the treatment that it deserves and begin the concert in a robust fashion.  But our songs are not all centuries old and we come into the 21st century with a dramatic song from The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, by Karl Jenkins. which was premiered in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on ANZAC Day, 2000.

The choir sings a beautiful and moving song, the words having been written in about 20 minutes by a Canadian army doctor early morning on 3rd May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypre.  The music was written much later by another Canadian, Stephen Chatman.  It has been part of official Remembrance Day ceremonies for many years.  Alongside this song the choir with Alex sings a very famous and appropriate hymn in this context.  The words were written in 1820 by Henry Francis Lyte and the music, Eventide, composed in 1860 by William Henry Monk.  We hope we can do justice to its beauty.

There are many famous operas by Italian composers and the choir sings the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco composed in 1842 and which established Verdi’s fame.  Every wife, mother, girlfriend, sibling and friend who saw their loved one leave for war prayed that they would come home again.  We hear that cry in a wonderful song that we sing from Les Miserables.  It was first sung in 1980.  Alex joins the choir again.

There are three other songs from the 20th century, each one very famous, one being from the musical Chess and the other composed by Leonard Cohen.  The third is an English patriotic song that can relate to any country.  The lyrics were written by Cecil Spring Rice and they were set to music by Gustav Holst, a notable British composer.

As in the past, we leave you to guess the names of most of the songs.  There are some pretty strong clues.

St Kilda Brass, as well as playing with the choir for some songs, will entertain us with a wonderful and appropriate selection of pieces of their own.  Some are poignant, others lively and some are tunes from the Second World War that most of us will know.  Included in these is a march from a great film, The Dam Busters.  It will be high class entertainment.

Anyone who attends this concert is in for a great treat.  There is little musical entertainment that can match the combination of brass, pipe organ and male voices.  (This happens to be written by a choir member, organist and former brass player!)  It will break the shackles that have held us back from live performances over the last few months.  It will be inspiring.  Bring friends and they will remain friends forever!