Vox Humana NSW and Aotearoa New Zealand

75 Wayfarers from Australia, Taiwan, Japan, India and Singapore toured New Zealand, Sydney and Canberra, performing Judy Clingan’s works The Prophet, The Ring Bearer, and various pieces by other contemporary Australian composers.

I’m a “late to the party” Wayfarer. When I joined the Melbourne Wayfarers in 2024 through longstanding Wayfarer friends, I felt I had found my people. Somehow my Girl Guide training and choir-loving parents had taught me some of the Wayfarers staples, and our musical knowledge and tastes overlapped surprisingly closely. To my mind, there is no better feeling than connecting with people through shared singing of known and loved songs in harmony.

I had heard about tours such as the unparalleled 2012 tour, which was described to me as a life-changing year of travelling, teaching, acting, music, original compositions and people finding themselves, and could only dream about joining such a tour myself. Imagine my delight, then, when the 2025 Vox Humana tour was announced. It was slated to be the last Wayfarers tour organised by Judy, which made it feel all the more important to seize this opportunity.

The tour involved two weeks of intensive rehearsal in Canberra (nothing like this to improve your musical skills immeasurably!) followed by performances throughout Canberra, New South Wales, and the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The repertoire was extensive and ambitious, including Judy’s original compositions The Prophet, a beautiful performance of singing, orchestration, theatre and eurhythmy; The Ring Bearer, a theatrical retelling of Lord of the Rings accompanied by highly evocative music; and Mythical Beasts, a bold and avant-garde suite of songs involving percussion such as gongs, keys, recorder halves, and shoes.

Along with our performances, we delivered workshops to students at local Steiner schools, in which they played recorders, percussion and string instruments, sang rounds and circle dance songs, and wore costumes of Australian animals and moved around accordingly on stage, accompanying Judy’s recorder and orchestra suite The Dancing Wombat. These workshops were some of the most rewarding times on tour. Being welcomed into these Steiner schools, which had such a strong emphasis on music and the creative and spiritual development of their children, was a delight and an utter privilege.

Some of the most beautiful moments on tour were the incidental ones, such as when we were all singing, almost ritualistically, in a spa at one of our accommodation venues; when we sang sea shanties and Taize chants on the wave-tossed ferry to the North Island to take our mind off the ship’s pitching and rolling; when we did a last-minute rehearsal, accompanied by a crackling, distorted microphone on our tour bus; when the cellists played an impromptu concert in the rec room of one of our hostels, or when we filled the lounge at another hostel and watched Lord of the Rings, each person quoting their part in the play as their signature scene flashed across the screen.

Being on a Wayfarers tour was heartwarming, connecting, musically and emotionally challenging and inspiring, and, indeed, life-changing.

Liz, Vox Humana tour participant, 2025

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