Turning 85 years old is certainly a hard act to follow. However, the start of the ABCI’s 2025 concert season heralds its biggest and most exciting collaboration yet. In collaboration with Genesis Baroque, one of Australia’s leading period-instrument orchestras, the three-year project features the immortal music of J.S. Bach and stretches all the way through to 2027. It’s something ABCI Artistic Director Nick Dinopoulos has been planning for years.

“It’s no secret that our singers have an affinity for Bach. Singing his music in Germany back in 2018, in the very church in Leipzig where Bach is buried, still counts as a major highlight in the history of the ABCI,” Dinopoulos recounts. By building on these skills and experiences, the organisation now embarks upon its first multi-year project ever.

Dr. Jennifer Kirsner, the artistic director of Genesis Baroque, summarises the project’s value: “Bach’s Passions count among the crowning jewels of all Western music. There are very few youth choirs world-wide who are able to perform these imposing and challenging works, but it’s a great thrill to have the Australian Boys Choral Institute in Melbourne who possess the required skills and discipline. We are looking forward to our collaboration enormously.”

This ambitious project for the continued artistic development of the ABCI is also a historically significant project in Australia and promises to make great cultural impact.

The project will set out in March 2024 with a performance of the St. Mark Passion, for which only the words survive. Dutch musicologist Robert Koolstra has undertaken meticulous scholarship to reconstruct the lost work. This has been attempted by others in the past, but Koolstra’s version is arguably the most musically satisfying, with only the recitatives that carry the narrative forward not being composed by Bach. The work is known to have taken the composer’s Trauerode (or ‘Funeral Music’) as it’s basis.

“The instrumentation is completely unique,” Koolstra explains. “With parts for two flutes, two oboes d’amore - the lower mezzo-soprano variant of the instrument developed in Leipzig during Bach’s time, two violas da gamba (a fretted bass instrument similar to the cello) plus lute and strings, the overall sonic effect is sublime.”

In 2026, the ABCI and Genesis Baroque will continue with Bach’s two surviving settings with the highly dramatic St. John Passion. Australia is also anticipating a visit from the Hannover Boys Choir, Germany in 2027. This will allow for a collaboration on the monumental St. Matthew Passion in which Bach employed two large choruses and two large orchestras. 2027 is the 300th anniversary of the first performance of the Matthew Passion and the event is sure to cause a stir.

It is thanks to the generosity of ABCI donors since the establishment of the Institute’s concert fund in 2020 that this project has even entered the realm of possibility. Further corporate and philanthropic support is being sought to ensure the project can be realised.

“We’re still a little short on funds,” Dinopoulos explains, “but we’re absolutely committed to seeing it all through. As a musician, you learn so much by performing this music and, as an audience member, it’s the sort of experience you never forget. I can’t wait to do it.”

Please visit www.givenow.com.au/australianboyschoir today to make your contribution marked to the ABCI’s concert fund and 3-year Passion Project.

Click here to view full details of our 2025 concert season and book your tickets today!