Usually on the second Saturday of every month, I go to the cinema with my Unitarian Universalist fellowship. But this month, there weren’t any movies that seemed appealing showing at the right time, so I decided to go to a concert where one of my Unitarian friends and her husband were singing. The group is called ‘All of Us’, conducted by Stephen Sharpe and they were excellent.
The program ‘Homegrown’ reflected the fact that all of the pieces that they performed were written either by locals, choir members or friends. People are just so talented: I’m in awe of them. There were two beautiful, and complementary songs about war. In the first, ‘One of Us’ conductor Stephen Sharpe took Paul Keating and Don Watson’s words at the funeral service for the Unknown Soldier . The second, with words and music by Bruce Watson, was called ‘The War Without a Name’ and it marked the loss of life in the Frontier Wars that it has taken us so long to recognize as a war, instead of anodyne phrases like ‘dispersal’ and ‘clearing the area’. There was a song that paid tribute to the joy of owning 72 Derwent pencils as a child (I only ever had 36), and another that captured so well the ‘Ennui’ of lockdown. Bruce Watson’s other song ‘Love is’ took the words of Corinthians 13, and it was beautifully rendered by the choristers each taking a stanza in turn. The concert was beautifully accompanied by cello, violin, guitar and piano.
The concert was held at Montsalvat, the artists’ colony out at Eltham, and it felt very special to have all the composers either up there performing on the stage, or else in the audience. It was really good- and even better knowing that it was so local. What riches our community holds!
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
The concert was held at Montsalvat, the artists’ colony out at Eltham. It was once such a popular site to take the children or interstate visitors to… but alas I haven’t been there for decades.