International touring began in 1988, with a week-long tour of concerts and Masses in the Australian Catholic Cathedrals of Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. Then over a six-week period from December, 1990 into January, 1991, a highly successful European tour involved a performing group of 70 singers and orchestral players accompanied by 65 supporters as they presented Masses and concerts in San Francisco, Westminster, Dublin, Paris, Chartres, Aachen, Dusseldorf, Leipzig, Dresden, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Venice, Florence, and Rome. For this tour, substantial funding support was received from the Lottery Grants Board, and the group was given government recognition as cultural ambassadors.
A second international tour, held during a five-week period from December 1994 into January 1995 involved 35 singers, 24 orchestral players, and 44 supporters. Concerts were given in the Cathedrals of St Petersburg, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Lucerne, Barcelona and Toledo. A joint performance with the Russian chamber choir Zlatoust was presented in Moscow’s Sheremetev Mansion, and the tour concluded with a concert in St-Chapelle, Paris. Mass was performed in Prague Cathedral on Christmas Day, in Milan Cathedral on New Year’s Day, and in St Hedwig’s Cathedral, Berlin, and Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris. A second Australian tour during June-July 1996 took 75 to Melbourne, Bendigo, Canberra, Goulburn and Sydney.
The arrival of the new millennium was celebrated with another world tour from 10 December 1999, till 16 January 2000, which included visits to historic sites with Handel’s Messiah in Egypt, the Holy Land, Turkey and Italy, as well as a concert tour of Europe. Performances were given in the cathedrals of Florence, Venice, Eisenstadt, Cologne, Haarlem, Brussels, and London. Haydn’s Theresienmesse was performed at the Epiphany High Mass in Vienna Cathedral, and 80 members of the touring group were invited to lead the singing in St Peter’s for the Papal Christmas Midnight Mass to inaugurate the Holy Year of Jubilee. A third Australian tour during September 2001 took 55 to Adelaide, Ballarat and Melbourne.
A fourth international tour, occurred in December 2005, when the choir and orchestra performed in cathedrals and major churches in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Cuzco, Lima, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Toronto and Montreal. Christmas was celebrated in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, and the tour concluded on New Year’s Day with Mass in Montreal Notre Dame Basilica, a concert, and Vespers in Montreal Cathedral. During December 2009 and January 2010, the fifth CBS international tour took 36 singers, 15 players, and 14 supporters via San Francisco’s St Mary’s Cathedral to performances in the Baltic States: Tallinn, Riga, Kaunas and Vilnius, and through Frankfurt to the cathedrals of Lisbon, Seville, Granada and Malaga.

Handel Messiah in Rome, Dec. 1999