Australian Christian Arts presents
The Australian Christian Proms
An evening of sacred music. Saturday 29 August 2026 · The Concourse Theatre, Chatswood · Doors 7.00pm, concert 7.30pm · Formal dress. Early bird until Friday 14 August with code PSALM150.
Sat 29 Aug 2026
Doors 7.00pm · concert 7.30pm
The Concourse Theatre
409 Victoria Ave, Chatswood
90 seconds
from Chatswood station
Formal dress
bar open from doors
Why a Proms
The genius of the Proms was never the formality. It was the welcome.
In 1895 a London impresario put the greatest music on earth in a room where ordinary people could walk about, talk, eat and drink, and called it the Proms. We are taking that welcome and giving it back to Christ.
A full symphony orchestra. A choir drawn from more than twenty denominations — Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Orthodox, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Salvationists, Adventists and Lutherans on one stage, sharing a music stand, playing for the same Lord. There is nowhere else in Sydney you can see that.
The whole evening rests on one line of Scripture, Psalm 150: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” You will hear it four times in one night, in four different musical languages — Dan Forrest's blazing Hallelu Yah, René Clausen's unaccompanied All That Hath Life and Breath, Matt Boswell's setting for orchestra and soloists, and John Rutter's Psalm 150 to finish: five of the most exhilarating minutes in the English choral tradition.
More than 6,600 people have gathered with us since 2022. Eight hundred came to Messiah. Six hundred and fifty came at Christmas. This theatre holds fewer than five hundred.
The Programme
Never been to an orchestral concert? Perfect.
You do not need to know anything about classical music to love this night. Here is every piece on the programme and why it will get you — Beethoven // Holst // Rutter // Jenkins // Forrest // Clausen // Boswell.
Beethoven — Natalia Raspopova, piano
Moonlight Sonata
That piano piece from every film, every ad, every late-night scroll? That one.
You already know the Moonlight Sonata even if you have never known its name. It is the sound of 2am thoughts, written by a man who was going deaf and pouring everything he could still hear into the keys. Live, in a silent hall, it is a completely different thing to your phone speaker.
Dan Forrest
Hallelu Yah: Psalm 150
Think choirs are quiet and polite? Give us three minutes.
A choir with percussion behind it and joy in front of it, singing the oldest party word in the world: hallelujah. Written by a composer who is alive right now, and it moves like something you would actually dance to.
Gustav Holst
Jupiter Theme: O God Beyond All Praising
This is the music movie soundtracks have been copying for a hundred years.
Holst wrote The Planets before film scores existed, and every epic soundtrack since owes him money. The big tune in the middle of Jupiter is so good it became a hymn sung at weddings and funerals for a century. If you have ever had goosebumps in a cinema, this is where that feeling was invented.
Chris Tomlin
How Great Is Our God
The song you sing in church, the size it always deserved to be.
Maybe you have sung this chorus a hundred Sundays with a band and a projector. Now picture it with a full choir and symphony orchestra behind it, strings and brass lifting the roof. Familiar words, enormous sound.
René Clausen
All That Hath Life and Breath
No instruments. No microphones. No tricks. Just human voices.
If you have ever fallen down a rabbit hole of a cappella videos, this is that, live, metres away from you. Voices whispering, snapping into rhythm, then opening into a wall of sound with nothing behind it but breath.
Michael Dooley
Suite from The Pilgrim's Progress
A story about a man walking through despair, danger and doubt to get home. Sound familiar?
The Pilgrim's Progress is the original quest story: one ordinary person, an impossible journey, everything trying to stop him. Composer Michael Dooley, alive and writing right now, has turned that journey into music for full orchestra. If you have ever loved a film score, you already speak this language.
Matt Boswell
Psalm 150
A worship song and a symphony orchestra walk into the same room.
Matt Boswell writes the kind of songs churches sing every week, and this one has been handed to a full orchestra with soloists out front. Catchy enough to hum on the drive home, big enough to fill the whole hall.
Karl Jenkins
Benedictus, from The Armed Man
The piece that makes grown adults cry in public. We are not exaggerating.
A single cello starts to sing, so quiet you lean forward. Written in 1999 for the victims of war in Kosovo, it is about what peace sounds like after everything has fallen apart. It builds until the whole choir and orchestra hit at once, and the entire room feels it in their chest. Bring tissues. We mean it.
Australian Christian Youth Orchestra & Choir
The Youth Debut — Holst and Rutter
The moment we have been waiting two years for.
The Australian Christian Youth Orchestra and Youth Choir perform in public for the very first time. They came together in May as the first phase of our youth programmes and have rehearsed every week since. On 29 August they walk onto a professional stage, play Holst and Rutter, then stand shoulder to shoulder with the adults to finish the night.
Matt Gibb
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord
The person who wrote this piece will be standing on the stage when you hear it.
Classical music has a reputation: written centuries ago, by people in wigs, somewhere far away. Not this. This eight-part setting comes from Matt Gibb, our own Choir Director, and he will be right there with the singers on the night. Music does not get more alive than that.
Stephen Adams & Frederic E. Weatherly
The Holy City
Before radio, before streaming, this was one of the biggest hit songs in the world.
Written in 1892 by the same lyricist who gave us Danny Boy, The Holy City is a dream in three acts: children singing in the streets of ancient Jerusalem, a shadow falling over a distant hill, then a blazing vision of a city where the gates stand wide open and night never comes. When the brass and choir hit the refrain, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Lift up your gates and sing!, you will understand why it is still filling halls 130 years on.
John Rutter — the finale
Psalm 150
The ending is choir, orchestra and organ all at once. The floor moves. So do you.
The last psalm in the Bible has one instruction: let everything that has breath praise the Lord. So for the final piece of the night, everything does. Brass, drums, massed voices and an organ you feel through your shoes. Nobody leaves quietly.
On the Podium
Natalia Raspopova.
Conducting the Proms is Natalia Raspopova, who opens the evening alone at the piano with the Moonlight Sonata. Raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition, Natalia has recorded with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, served as Assistant Conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra alongside Simone Young and Marin Alsop, conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra at London's Southbank, and reached the quarter-finals of La Maestra in Paris.
Tickets & Pricing
Choose your own seat. Fewer than 500 exist.
Booking is through Century's secure box office for The Concourse — you pick your exact seat on the theatre map. Concession pricing is available in every reserve and applied at checkout. Enter the code PSALM150 on the ticket page to unlock the early-bird discount — it runs until Friday 14 August, and our buy-tickets link carries the code for you automatically.
Best in house
Proms Patron
$132.05
The best seats in the house, and a way to directly back the mission.
A Reserve
$68.95 – $73.95
Premium stalls seating close to the stage.
B Reserve
$56.35 – $61.45
Excellent seats through the centre of the theatre.
C Reserve
$45.40 – $50.50
The most affordable way in, with the same full sound.
Prices shown are the current public sale range per reserve including booking fees; the spread within each reserve covers concession to adult.
Good to Know
Everything first-timers ask us.
Reclaiming the arts for Christ.
Saturday 29 August 2026, The Concourse Theatre, Chatswood. Fewer than five hundred seats. Come dressed for it, come early — the bar is open from seven.
Buy tickets now