Now in its impressive seventh year, the Brisbane Music Festival has secured its place on Australia’s cultural scene. The brainchild of ANAM alum Alex Raineri (piano 2015), the Festival has grown and evolved symbiotically with Alex’s own career aspirations. What started out as a forum for Alex to perform alongside his idols, friends and colleagues, the Festival has now established itself as the place to hear new works and artistic collaborations in an intimate yet approachable setting.
The inspiration for the Festival itself came off the back of the energy created by Alex’s own projects in Melbourne, through his ANAM Fellowship in 2016. For the Fellowship, which Alex undertook in the year after graduating from the Performance Program, Alex curated and performed in a series of four concerts, with a combination of works for solo piano through to ambitious chamber works by Berg and Schoenberg.
The first Brisbane Music Festival found a similar format, with several of Alex’s ANAM colleagues rounding out the ensembles for the 6-concert festival in December 2018. Alex was testing the waters, so to speak, in these early years, pulling together creative ideas and providing opportunities for new and rarely heard works to be performed. “The Festival was a chance for me to organise my creative ideas under one banner,” reflects Alex. “I wanted to create a space where artists and friends could play works that would be difficult to program elsewhere, but needed a platform to be heard.”
The Festival slowly expanded its number of performances, and this year, each of the 21 concerts have repeated performances. The Festival has an unusual format, with three intense seasons in August, October and December, to accommodate scheduling practicalities and artists’ availabilities. ANAM alumni artists performing alongside Alex this year include Lina Andonovska (flute 2011), Lotte Betts-Dean (fellow, voice 2014), Luke Carbon (clarinet 2016), Maxwell Foster (Young ANAM, piano 2008), Gemma Kneale (cello 2015), Tim Munro (flute 2005) and Thea Rossen (percussion 2016).
The Festival has built on its ethos to be a platform for new and recently developed works; now it’s primary focus is to showcase new collaborations between Australia’s top performers and composers. Not only has the Festival premiered some 40 works over the years, it has also seen subsequent performances of revised and expanded works. “The projects that have developed over time have been particularly rewarding to see,” says Alex. He doesn’t like to label any of the performances as particular genres or types of contemporary music, with each performance standing equally within the Festival. “Curatorial diversity is important to me. Regardless of the traction that any type of music has with an audience, it is important that a city has a place where all niche styles and artforms have a voice.”
Organising the Festival is no mean feat, and Alex acknowledges the support from government bodies, but in particular, the Festival’s dedicated audience members and donors. “Growing not just an audience, a community of listeners has been so empowering for the Festival and the creation of new music in Australia. This support has been fundamental to the success of the Festival, and inspiring to see our audience give power to experimentation and risk-taking. The best feedback after our performances is when we hear questions from our audience! But this curious, open listening should apply to all music, old and new. If a work makes you stop, absorb the details and cause a reaction, that connection is something special.”
Brisbane Music Festival 2024
Part I: Saturday 10 August, Friday 23 - Sunday 25 August
Part II: Friday 25 – Sunday 27 October
Part III: Friday 13 – Sunday 15 December
Venue FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St, Brisbane QLD
Tickets $25 (general admission)
Bookings brismusicfestival.com
Words by Laura Panther, Senior Alumni Coordinator
Image credit: Peter Godfrey Smith