Windy River |
Treble Choir
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Follow the river!
Having been commissioned to compose a choir piece by Westminster School, I looked them up on a map, and noticed that the Sturt River flowed past the school... Program Notes
Look at a map of Adelaide and you might notice a thin blue line in the southern suburbs, suspiciously straight, labelled Sturt River. Its much older Kaurna name is Warripari, “windy river”.
It isn’t a long river. It took me a day to walk along it, from the Adelaide Hills down to the beach at Glenelg. Despite living in Adelaide my whole life, I had hardly noticed it before – or at least not as a river. I knew of a shady stream flowing through Coromandel Valley, a big dam in the Sturt Gorge, a creek snaking around red gums at Warriparinga, and a concrete channel emptying into the Patawalonga near the airport. But not until I followed its path did I realise that it was all one river. The city has dammed its floods, straightened its course, and criss-crossed it with roads. But it’s still there. Using melodies that came to me on my walk, I’ve translated the river’s journey into music. This piece was composed for Westminster School, which backs onto a plain concrete drain in Marion. I hope it will help you to see and hear the river. © David John Lang 2025 Windy River was commissioned by Westminster School (South Australia) for the 2025 Australian Combined Schools Music Festival.
Windy River was first performed by the Combined Youth Chorus of Westminster School, Immanuel College, Wilderness School and St Peter's Woodlands Grammar School, conducted by Tori Longdon, on 22nd June 2025 at Westminster School, Marion, SA, Australia. The video above is of this performance, used with permission. |
Duration: 6 minutes
Difficulty: Primary/Middle School InstrumentationChildren's Choir (SA*)
Piano *The choir is divided into 2 parts for most of the piece. The only exception is during the Sturt Gorge section (bars 28–39) where three parts are called for (this is notated SSA, but any three-way division is fine). |