Erin Murphy, choirs, workshops, original songs
About Erin
Since graduating from the Queensland Conservatorium, Erin has worked as a professional actor, musician, composer, arranger and music director for most of Brisbane’s theatre companies.
Erin experimented with many different musical genres, including grunge, ballet composition, workshops, wedding music, soundscapes, voice-overs, and many things a capella. Her first choir “Qwired” ran from 1996 – 2000, and had anywhere up to 50 members, many performances, including Gospel at the Symphony, plus a self-funded CD titled Things Go Round.
Erin’s projects include a book of 50 original rounds for choirs, a book of forty haiku arranged for choirs and contributed by her Good Company choir members, a book of “warm” songs with contributions from other Brisbane community choral conductors, and a book of original children’s songs. She does vocal arrangements of pretty much anything.
Erin has a passion for sharing and teaching music, and for shared musical experiences, and relishes the challenges of developing new ways of making music with people of all ages and abilities.
GOOD COMPANY CHOIR
Good Company is made up of an exceptional bunch of experienced musicians: instrumentalists, singers, teachers, professionals, with a huge arsenal of talent at their disposal. The whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Members include...
LIZ
Too busy mother of three+. Disability advocate and kids' charity founder. Am a TV cameraperson for the national broadcaster. Learned to sing opera but had too much fun singing girl-group harmonies in various guises. Singing to me is as important as breathing.
Choir is a balm to my overworked mind - my place of stillness and immersion in harmonious pleasure. For friendship, for learning, but most of all to sing!
CHRIS
I've retired from teaching art yet continue to practise art making, while taking on more of the domestic duties to support my hardworking wife.
Choir is an opportunity to learn more about music, and to be part of making lovely harmonies ... such a good thing to do!
MELANIE
As a busy teacher in a high school, I love to sing as it gives me a calm mind where song is the only thing in my head. I love the friendship that forms when you sing with a community choir.
KATH
I'm an early childhood music specialist who loves sharing my love of music with little'uns in a variety of locations including childcare centres, the Queensland Conservatorium, and the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital. I love sharing my love of music with big'uns too, which is why I LOVE being in Erin's choir. Good Company ticks all my boxes by a) keeping my adult-level musicianship awake and on its toes, b) its wide and varied repertoire that's heaps of fun to sing, and c) the chance to regularly hang out with a bunch of super-skilled, lovely people. We laugh. A lot. It's awesome :-)
ANJE
Anje is a full-time performer, best known for her work as vocalist and percussionist with The View From Madeleine's Couch, the Brazilian band she co-founded 18 years ago. Her career has encompassed performances in musical and street-theatre troupes, 10 years with The Flanellettes a capella group, international touring and study in Brazil, independently producing a Brazilian festival for five years, concert and festival programming for Brisbane City Council, and national touring for Musica Viva in Schools. Anje loves to make a nice noise with other people, especially when those people are old friends. Over the years she's wrangled her way into all of Erin's choirs, and she sings with the sopranos, even though she is not one. There's something in that for all of us.
ROSALIND
After graduating from the Qld Conservatorium of Music in classic vocal performance, Rosalind has combined a variety of strange jobs with singing with Opera Qld (once managing to set her costume on fire on the Virgin Mary’s candles in the final scene of “Carmen”), Belles trio, The Gritty Pearls and an ensemble of 3 voices and double bass called Katouche.
JENNY
moment of stillness
smile in the heart of the voice
happy day - choir night
warm up, rhythm sticks
sets and vox and on a roll
hit me hit me hit...
FATIMA
For 20 years I have been singing, dancing, playing exotic musical instruments, leading bands, producing CDs and pandering to an incessant travel bug which has allowed me the joy of basking in many glorious sounds hidden in far off corners of the globe.
DAVID
First there was noise making, cop sirens, tyres on gravel, astronaut's compressed chatter, the peeps between that chatter. Then birdsong. Music, a Ha! Instruments, voices. Adlibbing vocals. Hold it! ..Harmony. Magic. Now we're flying. Now David glides with beautiful birds, soaring and banking through the clouds. Thank you, Gods.
HAMISH
Hamish plays drums, but he's smart. He has an old man's brain in a child's body. He may be doing a sort of mangled Benjamin Button.
STEPH
Steph is a Brisbane person who sings, runs choirs and helps other people to sing more freely. She's not great with words, but she's working on it.
KIRI
Based in Brisbane, Queensland, community choir conductor, workshop facilitator and composer, Kiri Waiata began singing in choirs at the age of seven in her native New Zealand.
Here in Australia, after singing with the one community choir for 15 years, she decided to start her own. In the past 5 years she has been music director for Te Tira, a community choir based in Bardon, Brisbane, The Transformers, a Reclink Australia choir, Word of Mouth and the Hot Chilli Chicks. In 2015 Kiri published her first songbook of original choral compositions for community choirs.
With singing in her bones, Kiri has continued to sing with various community choirs and recently joined the Vernandah ChiX, an all women ensemble singing songs in the languages of the Torres Strait, Samoa, PNG and New Zealand.
A sought after facilitator, Kiri runs workshops on the power of sound and voice to improve one's singing and speaking voice and to enhance meditation and spiritual practices.
At the heart of the work Kiri does is a desire to “change the world, one choir at a time.”
DAVE
Dave is the nicest, deepest bass you could ever meet.