The elegant, colourful and ornate 19th-century Methodist church on the Richmond Hill, offers an instantly theatrical environment with steeply rising stepped wooden terraces to a central organ high at the front.

Richmond Uniting Church, is registered as of significance by the National Trust. For more information see the listing on the Victorian Heritage Register.

In April 2006 the space was used to full theatrical effect in the dramatic setting of the Passion by Herzoengberger and the premiere of settings of Rilke poems from the Book of Hours by Melbourne composer Kevin March.

Click here for an excerpt from the concert.

For 30 years, the concerts of Astra Chamber Music Society have ranged around Melbourne’s architectural environment. Each concert has had a site-specific design that takes advantage of the marvellous visual qualities, spatial possibilities, and acoustic personality of each building. The music, in turn, contributes a new quality to the perception of the buildings, now experienced by audiences as a sounding space - an area where cultural issues from music’s history are traversed, and new ideas in Australian composition are explored.