Red Dirt Hymns

A hymnal to the country under our feet. A living songbook more than four years in the making, Andrew Ford's hymnal brings together the words of sixteen contemporary Australian writers – poets, essayists, and folksingers. Born in a time of fire and darkness, grief, and loss, and then fragile, tender hope, Red Dirt Hymns are songs of awe and praise, dedicated not to a god, but to the land. Red Dirt Hymns is performed by the ever-daring voices of Luminescence Chamber Singers alongside two rising stars: Hilary Geddes (electric guitar), 2021 Freedman Jazz Fellow and lead guitarist of Triple J favourites The Buoys, and category-defying cellist Freya Schack-Arnott. Songs that span art music, folk song, country ballad, and Aussie rock unfold to the evocative imagery of Sammy Hawker, whose art is created within the fabric of country itself: saltwater, limestone and eucalypt. From Ellen van Neerven's dark clouds to John Kinsella's abundant gardens, Red Dirt Hymns does what a hymnal is meant to do: it draws us closer to each other, and to the light and shade of our wide brown land.