An Oriana Songbook - P* Minus 17 and Counting

*Performance

Back in the pioneering days of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), it was so exciting for a fourteen-year-old boy (me!) to listen to the lead-up to an imminent launch from Cape Canaveral. The jargon they used was fascinating – “Roger, Mercury 3”; “Copy that, Control”; “T minus 20 and Counting”; and, most exciting of all, “We are Go for Launch”. Then the countdown, and “We have lift-off” (never “Blast-off – that was strictly science fiction movies and comics). All delivered in a monotonal, no-cause-for-alarm voice, as if it was all completely routine, when it was anything but.  

Well, preparing for an Oriana concert season may not be as heady as preparing to launch a Saturn rocket carrying human cargo into orbit or to the moon. But in its own way it’s just as exciting, and often exhilarating. The choir has been diligently rehearsing, refining and polishing seventeen beautiful songs, under the expert guiding hand of our very own “Mission Control”, the high flying and inimitable Daniel Calder, and loving every minute of it.

And his demeanour at the podium is not too dissimilar to that of the man at the microphone on the ground, communicating with the astronauts in the waiting capsule. With even, steady guidance he has brought us through nearly three months of not-too-rigorous, but certainly stretching, challenging training, to ready us for the launch of An Oriana Songbook. And now we are very, very close to being Go for lift-off.

Lift-off, or rather, curtain-up, is set for Sunday, June 28 (which just happens to be seventeen days from the date of this missive – hence the heading) at Stella Maris Performance Centre, Maroochydore, with a second mission scheduled for Saturday, July 4, at St. Patrick’s Church, Gympie.

An Oriana Songbook is not a journey through space. But it is a wonderful trip through time, via a programme of beautiful music spread across the past 230 years, from Robert Burns’ achingly beautiful “A Red, Red Rose” through stirring spirituals like “Go Where I Send Thee”, to sublime works of latter day like “The Seal Lullaby” and “Stars I Shall Find”.

You may not be soaring literally through the heavens, but you will be uplifted, again and again by this superb music, superbly prepared for, and presented to, You. By the magic of music, Oriana and Daniel Calder will take you on ‘a trip to the moon on gossamer wings.’

An Oriana Songbook

Sunday 28 June 2026, 2:00pm - Stella Maris Primary School Hall, Maroochydore

Saturday 4 July 2026, 1:00pm - St Patrick's Catholic Church, Gympie

For bookings and information, go to www.oriana.org.au 

 Ian Rix

11 June, 2026.