From modest beginnings when a bunch of ANU students got together, Luminescence singers have catapulted on to the wider Australian music scene as a respected professional six-voice ensemble, writes HELEN MUSA.

While the origins of Luminescence can be traced to 2013 under composer and ANU School of Music graduate Daniel Brinsmead, 2015 marked the formal establishment of the Luminescence organisation and the Luminescence Children’s Choir.

To observe their 10th birthday, they’re performing a birthday concert at Albert Hall. Billed as a celebratory gala, it will feature a new commissioned work, Lichtmärchen, by Elena Kats-Chernin, words from broadcaster/composer Andrew Ford; I Am Not Yet Born, by Elliott Gyger and songs from their short history, during which they’ve premiered more than 60 new works.

Luminescence will soon release its first studio album with ABC Classic FM, make its debut with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and embark on an ambitious new project called Luminescence and the Machine.

It’s not been an easy or simple thing making the transition from a group of students who just wanted to sing together into a professional organisation.

It didn’t happen overnight either and despite a $40,000 a year multi-year funding from ArtsACT, they’ll always need extra support, especially since their kind of music is better suited to to smaller venues such as the Drill Hall Gallery, where they have often performed.

“Of course, at Christmas time we do five or six show shows, but we also spend a lot of the year touring and working hard to get projects up, otherwise depending on community support from a few people who have really worked hard,” says artistic director and mezzo-soprano AJ America.

They share this love of vocal music with “friend and artistic mentor”, Roland Peelman, whose involvement with the ensemble began when they shared office space in Ainslie Arts Centre and he ended up as “part of the family”.

America emphasises that Luminescence is not just an organisation, but a group with a certain artistic identity.

“When we’re rehearsing, we have a way of working together and everything is built on the previous thing that we have done, so that our singers have always felt there is a personal buy-in, which gives depth to our work,” she says.

“We also do a lot of touring.”

Some destinations are fairly close, such as Braidwood, the Southern Highlands and the south coast but there is also the Central West — Dubbo, Parkes and Forbes, to say nothing of metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne.

“Our dream was to become living, breathing ambassadors within our capital city,” she says.

One important thing for “Lumi” has been to create programs with a long life so that Of the Body, composed by ensemble member Dan Walker, has now been performed a dozen times and a movement from it will be performed in the gala concert.

They don’t just sing high-end polyphonic music, she stresses, and they aim to present a diverse range of music, so that in the coming gala, they’ll be singing Little Fish by Neil Finn; On And Ever Onward by Bjork and Dirty Projectors and I Heard You Sing, commissioned from local guitarist/composer Jess Green in 2022.

Underlying all Luminescence’s work is the principle of the voice as their main musical instrument, an empowering thing, she says, and the reason she got into vocal music.

That theme of empowerment is particularly strong in the children’s choir, distinctive for their willingness to take on “something good and meaty”, seen when they sang The Children’s Crusade in 2023. They will become audiences of the future, she believes.

America emphasises that they are a music ensemble not a choir in the conventional sense, where the individual is subsumed into the wider group.

“We have more than one personality,” she says. “Each is an artist in his or her own right, but together they form something distinctive and unique.”

Luminescence singers’ 10th Birthday Gala, Albert Hall, June 15.