Each Astra program is planned as an event that engages the audience with the stimulus of contrasting materials, extending from the sound of voices to combinations with instruments, electro-acoustics, text and theatre.
It also has a continuing project to publish scores of the works of the influential Australian composer, performer and educator Keith Humble.
Astra was formed in 1951 as an orchestra of women musicians under the direction of Madame Asta Flack, a violinist and conductor who had migrated to Australia from Lithuania.
[2] In 1958, George Logie-Smith became Musical Director, extending the orchestra to include men and a larger wind section and founding the Astra Choir.
Over a period of 20 years, he developed links with Australian composers as well as giving performance of choral and chamber orchestral repertoire rarely heard at that time (for example the Bach Passions, Stravinsky's Les Noces, and works by Bartok, Britten, Penderecki et al.) Since John McCaughey became Musical Director in 1978, the Astra Choir has provided the principal focus of concerts, joined by many of Australia's leading contemporary instrumental performers as guests.