Christie Anderson

Born in Streaky Bay and brought-up in Port Augusta, Adelaide meant long drives and cultural immersion to the young Christie Anderson. Now a professional singer, award-winning conductor and Artistic Director of both Young Adelaide Voices and Adelaide Chamber Singers, Christie particularly recalls outings to the Town Hall for family classical concerts, where the children sat up front on the floor, level with the strings, and the parents sat in the back of the room – heaven for a girl who was always singing, whistling and playing the recorder or clarinet. At 11 she won a scholarship to Marryatville’s special interest music program, at 13 did her first European tour, and in year 10 she won a scholarship to the Elder Conservatorium.

Having performed in festivals all over the world, Christie comes back again and again to Adelaide’s community-oriented festivals. She speaks of the bygone days of the Barossa Music Festival, so important to chamber music, where the locals would organise food for the artists, hand out fliers and get everyone out.

She says this kind of communal visibility isn’t unique to rural areas; we see it in the city as well.

‘When you’re here in festival time you know it’s festival time. You may choose to partake by purchasing tickets and attending, but you can also go to pop-ups. You can watch your buskers. The way that they use digital technology to get people to just talk about their community, they step into a booth in Rundle Mall or in Victoria Square. You know, that part of it I think is actually really incredible, and it’s always felt like that here.’

Clearly for Christie it’s collaboration between artists and consumers that make a festival distinctively successful, and it’s this concept of collaboration that has recently invigorated her own creative development. During the worst of COVID, when live music wasn’t permitted and theatres across the globe closed, Christie began collaborating with the Artistic Director of Gravity and Other Myths, Darcy Grant.

Until then she’d thought of music as being very prescriptive – the composer creates the music, hands it to the conductor, the conductor guides the musicians and the musicians play it – and though the project they worked on involved a partnership of music and body movement, it was that sense of co-operation with Darcy that informed a new way of thinking about conducting. ‘It’s about being flexible,’ she says, and it worked when she was the musical director for Adelaide Festival’s large ensemble Watershed, and it works particularly well for the youths she conducts.

She’s interested in young people ‘opening their ears and opening their eyes to opportunities and experiences that might be different to “Here’s our rehearsal and this is what we’re going to do.”’ It’s coming together and thinking bigger, and that goes for the Artistic Director, the composer, the musicians, festival producers and, ultimately, the audience.

Christie was instrumental in bringing the first Narungga piece from Yorke Peninsula that had been sung in over 90 years to the WADU Youth Choir Festival.

She worked with Kaurna coaches to ensure that not only was the language pronounced properly, but that the kids understood what they were experiencing and the unique gift that it was.

She’s interested in making the festival experience extraordinary for everyone – audience and artists included: ‘We’re not just chucking something into the middle and going, ‘Please come to our stuff.’ This culture has developed to allow us to grow … and to allow audiences to grow as well.’
 
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This article is part of the Festival City Stories series, a collection of reflections about Adelaide made by the people who make this a festival place. The project was funded through the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Arts South Australia, Arts Recovery Fund, and delivered in partnership with the State Library of South Australia. 

Written by: Heather Johnson

Photography by: Alex Van de Loo