Our 2025 Season is full of music that will fill you with joy.
The season opens with the Choirs and Sydney Opera House Grand Organ at full throttle in I Was Glad – Cathedral Classics. There are great classics like JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion with a Romantic twist by Felix Mendelssohn, Brahms’ heartfelt, consoling ‘human requiem’ and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. And we welcome back old friends like legendary choir leader Eric Whitacre, and celebrate brilliant composers of today like Nardi Simpson, Alice Chance and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange. And ChorusOz takes place under the sails of the Sydney Opera House with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ epic A Sea Symphony.
Experience the VOICE, ENERGY and JOY of our 2025 Season.
Brett Weymark turns to the English cathedral for inspiration, assembling some of the great hymns and anthems in a thrilling program for the 140-voice Symphony Chorus, with David Drury playing the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ. This is music that has filled the air at coronations, weddings, jubilees and funerals – the perfect accompaniment for pageantry and celebration, for meditation and mourning. Rediscover the power of music to quieten the mind, create space for mystery, and lift the spirit.
Tuesday 1 April | 7pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
Saturday 5 April | 2pm
All Saints Cathedral | Bathurst
Saturday 12 April | 2pm
St Peter & Paul’s Old Cathedral | Goulburn
Hear the St Matthew Passion through ‘Romantic ears’ in a recreation of the concert that sparked the 19th-century Bach revival. The Chamber Singers and VOX are joined by the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra in an illuminating performance of Mendelssohn’s 1841 version, conducted by Elizabeth Scott, with Evangelist Andrew Goodwin and Teddy Tahu Rhodes returning to sing the role of Christus.
Thursday 17 April | 7pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
You know the William Tell overture (well, you know the Lone Ranger tune from the end), but where did Rossini go from there? William Tell was his last opera, a grand creation for the Paris audience. After that he retired, only to emerge three decades later to write a ‘Little Solemn Mass’ – defying its name with music that’s expansive and joyous. Festival Chorus sings Rossini’s final masterpiece with dramatic highlights from Act I of William Tell.
Saturday 17 May | 2pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
ChorusOz is your chance to sing at the Sydney Opera House! In 2025 ChorusOz will draw singers from across Australia to perform A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams. And Sydney’s opera house by the harbour makes the perfect location for this thrilling musical vision of optimism, discovery and drama. Whether you’re in the audience or part of the choir on stage, ChorusOz promises an unforgettable, uplifting experience.
Sunday 8 June | 5pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
‘Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.’ Eric Whitacre’s newest major choral work is a meditation in sound inspired by the visionary poet William Blake. It finds grandeur and dreamy beauty in the contemplation of simplicity, and the result is a musical mantra that promises to fill the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall with seamless, soaring sound that’s ‘truly in the moment’.
Friday 27 June | 7pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
Sydney’s White Bay Power Station is the immersive new venue for a powerful and moving concert inspired by the natural world and the effects of industrialisation. Brett Weymark conducts the Chamber Singers in two song cycles. One is lyrical and tender, the other playful – both use the sheer beauty of music to call attention to our effect on the planet. A new work from Nardi Simpson and music from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons transformed for choir rounds out the program.
Saturday 16 August | 2.30pm
White Bay Power Station
The time is 1939. The time could be now. Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of Our Time wasn’t simply inspired by social injustice, persecution and conflict, it was written in the thick of these things – begun and finished during World War II. We’ve paired this modern classic, inspired by the Passions of Bach, oratorios of Handel and Afro-American spirituals, with two new works featuring our youth choir VOX.
Saturday 13 September | 2pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
A serious young man, torn by the death of his mother and the loss of a mentor, not a believer but finding comfort in the spiritual. This is the Brahms who wrote A German Requiem – a magnificent, heartful work for soloists, chorus and orchestra. The German words speak of consolation and the music is rich with emotion. Experience this most ‘human’ of requiems.
Saturday 25 October | 2pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
The six ‘episodes’ of the Christmas Oratorio were written for different church services over the Christmas season. Performing them together in concert is the musical equivalent of binge-watching Bach – the best of guilty pleasures! In 2023, Brett Weymark conducted Parts 1–3, and in 2025, Elizabeth Scott concludes the series with Parts 4–6. The Christ child is named in a gently uplifting cantata, then the story turns to the journey of the Magi from the East in music that’s as brilliant and intoxicating as gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Saturday 13 December | 2pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
Here at Sydney Philharmonia Choirs we ‘really like Christmas’ – the festivity, the magic, the message of peace and harmony. Above all, we love raising the roof of the Sydney Opera House with Carols at the House! Join us for this joyous and uplifting concert with all your favourite carols, some modern classics, and an irresistible Aussie twist.
Want to sing with us in the Christmas Choir? Registrations open in July 2025. Info & register at www.sydneyphilharmonia.com.au/choirs/community-choirs/
Friday 12 December | 8pm
Saturday 13 December | 8pm
Sunday 14 December | 2pm
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall