Selected

Works

Coming soon: “I asked the world”

Come to Dubbo at the end of September to see the 2025 Moorambilla Voices Gala Concert, where Christine Elise Chen’s new work, I asked the world, will be premiered by the Birralii Ensemble and the Moorambilla Voices Chamber Orchestra, along with new works for the older primary school and high school ensembles by the three other composers-in-residence, Kevin Barker, Elizabeth Jigalin, and Oliver John Cameron. Visit moorambilla.com to learn more.

a sandy dirt bushtrail leads through green grass, bushes, and trees, with gum leaves in the foreground and the bright blue sky and puffy white clouds in the background

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

Water Knowing

Chen has been working with APRA AMCOS Luminary Award-winning Australian regional arts not-for profit Moorambilla Voices, with APRA AMCOS Award-winning artistic director Michelle Leonard OAM for over three years, writing choral and dance works for the youngest Moorambilla ensemble, Birralii (Years 3-4 ).

Moorambilla composers-in-residence go on Country to be taught by Indigenous elders, linguists, and cultural knowledge holders, to create works steeped in the rich culture and heritage of the region’s original landowners. In 2024, Moorambilla Artists went on Barkindji Country to Mutawintji National Park to learn from National Park members and renowned Barkindji visual artist Badger Bates, in a rich red-dirt landscape, pictured below.

Over the course of 2.5 days in August and 2.5 days in September, the remarkable regional children of Birralii get a crash course in choral singing and choreographed dance, culminating in the performance you see here, at the Dubbo Regional Theatre in September 2024.

a tall imposing red and black rock cliff with scrubland trees standing tall beneath a bright blue sky
vividly coloured natural red rock formations in Mutawintji
vividly coloured orange-red earth, a flat area dotted all over with hardy, dry scrub plants, rocky hills in the distance, blue sky and puffy white clouds above

As a Hart Longs

for SATB Choir, a cappella, on the Psalm text of the same name, performed here by the Marble Church Choir, NYC, under the direction of Kenneth Dake in 2018, and commissioned by Balint Karosi and the St Peter’s Church Collegium, NYC.

Narran Wetlands dotted with saltbush plants and animal tracks in the dirt, the water reflecting the blue sky and wispy clouds above

The Heart-Place

Chen was one of four composers-in-residence with Moorambilla Voices in 2023, traveling to the Warrumbungles and Narran Lakes with the guidance of Indigenous elders, cultural knowledge-holders, and linguists Aunty Brenda McBride, Rhonda Ashby, Jill and Paris Norton, and Will Robinson. On Gamilaroi Country, in Warrumbungle National Park and Narran Lake Nature Reserve, we traced the long line of water across the land, from waterholes fed by the Artesian Basin in the rocky, volcanic landscape of the Warrumbungles Mountain Range, all the way to the flat wetlands of Narran Lakes, some 300km away, pictured to the left.

Three women stand and sing while reading paper sheet music they hold in their hands. Sitting and listening in front of them are a group of 8 and 9 year old children.
white and black sheet music with a love-heart hand drawn around the word 'Birralii' and the title 'Hold Fast to the Heart-Place' - the first page of an early musical draft

On the left, the first page of an early draft of “The Heart-Place,” and on the right, composer Christine Elise Chen, educator-performer Madeleine Wittmark, and artistic director Michelle Leonard OAM demonstrate a vocal phrase for the Birralii ensemble at Moorambilla Voices’ 2023 August Residency camps on-site in Baradine.

Photo Credit: Noni Carroll Photography. Used with permission from Moorambilla Voices Ltd.

Forward-Dreaming

for solo piano, performed here by Allison Wang in 2021.

“Written during the COVID-19 Pandemic and performed by Allison Wang to an empty concert hall and a digital audience, Forward-Dreaming is about maintaining hope in the face of adversity and uncertainty. In an age of anxiety, it’s all too easy to cast our thoughts into a bleak future of our anxiety’s imagining. That image of anxiety can then paralyse us with indecision and ultimately inaction. To ‘Forward-Dream’ therefore, is to commit a radical and transgressive act of re-imagining a hopeful future. Simple optimism is increasingly a form of resistance, in a world that so often asks us to give up or give in. Simple optimism gives us the emotional means and the resilience to go on, holding fast to our dreams. That, I believe, is something worth striving for.”

-Christine Elise Chen

Accessibility Text: Pianist Allison Wang performs Forward-Dreaming by Christine Elise Chen on a Steinway Grand piano in a large concert hall

End of Love Circa 2013

for Voice and Piano, music and words by the composer. Performed by the composer and pianist Danny Zelibor in 2016.