Project Description
On the Banks of the Reedy Lagoon is an Australian folk song based on a poem written by Jimmy Connors, described as a prolific contributor of newspaper verses, and published in the Queensland Times on 14 September 1893. It may have been inspired by the ill-fated Shearers Strike of 1891. Jimmy had been living in Redbank Plains at the time of writing the poem and, sadly, died a year or two before it was printed.
These three arrangements of On the Banks of the Reedy Lagoon are part of a larger collection of choral arrangements of 20 Australian folk song titles. The works were commissioned in 2022 by the Queensland Kodály Choir as a legacy project of Australian Choral Music and are collectively available in a two-part anthology titled On a Distant Shore.
The Queensland Kodály Choir has generously determined that these anthologies and all of their associated resources should be made freely available to anyone who would like to make use of them. To facilitate this, whilst each of the arrangements is copyright, the full set of project resources has been licensed under Creative Commons International Licence, meaning that they can be freely shared, copied and/or redistributed.
Conductors/choirs wishing to access the Anthology – Parts 1 & 2 – and/or the companion rehearsal tracks, can do so by following the link to the Cuskelly College of Music website. The complete individual titles (including cover title page, vocal score, piano accompaniment, extracted instrument parts, performance notes and glossary of terms) are available in the Anthology Catalogue on this website.
Perusal and download copies of the three arrangements of On the Banks of the Reedy Lagoon are available below.
