Sep 13, 2026 · 40 min · 12 segments
Michelle Leonard shares her journey from growing up in Coonamble, NSW< to leading Moorambilla Voices, an organisation transforming regional Australia's arts scene. Discover how her work promotes…
Michelle LeonardGuest
Terri CowleyHost
Tell me about what this landmark gala means and what's the show going to look like?
Oh, look, if you'd asked me that even a week ago, Terry, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.
I have just come off the back of three weeks of residency camps where we co-create that concert with the students themselves.
And that's a fairly extraordinary undertaking because it means that there's over 90 minutes worth of new Australian commissions every year.
So in our 21st year, I think everyone recognises that for any organisation in any business that surviving that long but when you're dealing with an arts company that is also operating through drought and oh everything that the last 20 years has thrown us, COVID, you name it, then it's worth celebrating that milestone and the children certainly deserve are worth my very best effort and if you wanted to throw a glamorous party you could just have a party or you could invite everyone to the most iconic performance space in the world really and that would be our main stage of the Sydney Opera House in the concert hall and with a lot of tenacity and a little bit of good luck we were able to secure a date on the October long weekend which means that we'll be bringing down 500 people from regional New South Wales, all our supervisors, those wonderful volunteers, as well as the 400 children.
And we're going to be creating a performance that directly links the last four years of work that we've done around the rivers and the Warrumbool, which is what many people would know as the emu in the sky or the Milky Way, and looking at birds that connect on land to the sky and and going from Narren Lakes, those remarkable, beautiful lakes out on the other side of Lightning Ridge, down through to the Macquarie Marshes, and really sort of asking the children to paint and draw and dance and sing and learn Gamilaroi and ULRI and sing in those languages as well, which, of course, is something that choirs have always sung in multiple languages, French, Italian, German, Latin, French.
beginning of time but to have that energy and support to be able to really ramp up that experience for them over the last three years has been quite breathtaking and it's beauty actually.
Tell me about what this landmark gala means and what's the show going to look like?
Oh, look, if you'd asked me that even a week ago, Terry, I wouldn't have been able to tell you.
I have just come off the back of three weeks of residency camps where we co-create that concert with the students themselves.
And that's a fairly extraordinary undertaking because it means that there's over 90 minutes worth of new Australian commissions every year.
So in our 21st year, I think everyone recognises that for any organisation in any business that surviving that long but when you're dealing with an arts company that is also operating through drought and oh everything that the last 20 years has thrown us, COVID, you name it, then it's worth celebrating that milestone and the children certainly deserve are worth my very best effort and if you wanted to throw a glamorous party you could just have a party or you could invite everyone to the most iconic performance space in the world really and that would be our main stage of the Sydney Opera House in the concert hall and with a lot of tenacity and a little bit of good luck we were able to secure a date on the October long weekend which means that we'll be bringing down 500 people from regional New South Wales, all our supervisors, those wonderful volunteers, as well as the 400 children.
And we're going to be creating a performance that directly links the last four years of work that we've done around the rivers and the Warrumbool, which is what many people would know as the emu in the sky or the Milky Way, and looking at birds that connect on land to the sky and and going from Narren Lakes, those remarkable, beautiful lakes out on the other side of Lightning Ridge, down through to the Macquarie Marshes, and really sort of asking the children to paint and draw and dance and sing and learn Gamilaroi and ULRI and sing in those languages as well, which, of course, is something that choirs have always sung in multiple languages, French, Italian, German, Latin, French.
beginning of time but to have that energy and support to be able to really ramp up that experience for them over the last three years has been quite breathtaking and it's beauty actually.
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