Every touring musician has a tale up their sleeve, and Andrew Blanch has a doozy for Limelight – a formidable obstacle, a race against the clock, an irate organist!

“We had two back-to-back concerts at a church in a major city in the US,” Blanch recounts.

“We arrived at the church for soundcheck, and no one seemed to be there. We’re calling the phone numbers we have, but no one’s picking up; we’re banging on every door we can, and starting to get pretty concerned as we had 500+ people booked to come that evening.”

Andrew Blanch. Photo © Toby Burrows Photography

Then, the muffled sounds of an organ began to drift through the walls.

“We were banging and shouting for 20 minutes before a very angry organist finally opened the door, absolutely furious we were interrupting his practice he’d scheduled with the venue. He was threatening to lock us out! We did our best to play diplomat, and everything got organised in record time before the audience arrived, who were none the wiser. It was the closest we came to a genuine touring disaster, but everything was okay in the end. The organist ended up staying and loving the concert and warmed to us, and we to him! “

Chatting to Limelight, the Australian guitarist has wrapped up his fourth tour of the US. Across these few months, he and fellow performer mezzo-soprano María Eugenia Nieva (also his partner) have notched up 68 performances and put 19,000 miles (30.5 km) of American road behind them – nearly halfway across the world, he notes.

“It’s a little unimaginable, having grown up in Australia. We have a handful of cities and you need to fly between most of them when touring. The USA is literally the largest economy in the world. You can just keep on driving and driving and you will never run out of big cities to perform in. The sheer size makes life as a performing musician mean something else entirely; we feel very lucky that this country has embraced what we’re doing with open arms.”

Andrew Blanch, Emmanuele Baldini and Daniel Rojas with the São Paulo Studio Chamber Orchestra in the studio. Photo © Abraham Orozco

That’s not all that’s been on Blanch’s schedule for the second half of 2026. In June, ABC Classic released Tierra, his fourth studio album featuring the São Paulo Studio Chamber Orchestra (it earned a five-star review from Limelight’s Will Yeoman, who called the record his best yet), and he’s about to celebrate its launch with an Australian tour across 25 October – 10 November, hitting Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Tierra, Blanch explains, is the Spanish word for dirt, earth or ground. The album celebrates the cross-cultural influences at the heart of so much of the music beloved and lauded today.

“Musicians of all kinds, right through history, rarely confined themselves to music exclusively of their own cultures.  They travelled the world, they exchanged ideas, and explored both ‘the other’ and their own culture. Bach wrote French Suites, English Suites, and his Italian Concerto, Ravel wrote his bolero and Debussy his habaneras; Albéniz and many other Spanish composers embraced aspects of French Impressionism,” explains Blanch.

“This cross-cultural aspect to music is so well-encapsulated in many of the musical genres in Latin America, and gives the guitar its unique character and voice as an instrument – it is, by its very nature, an instrument that bridges an enormous number and variety of cultures. All the works on the album have their own colourful intercultural histories, and I think they show the guitar’s extraordinary range as an instrument”

Tierra spans a chronological journey from the Baroque period with Vivaldi, 19th-century Spain with Albéniz through to a brand new guitar concert commissioned from Chilean-Australian composer Daniel Rojas.

Andrew Blanch, Live at Ken Done for Live at Yours, 2021. Photo © Live Photography

“Daniel is an outstanding pianist in his own right, a charismatic performer, improviser, composer, scholar and educator. I greatly admire this breadth, and this extensive experience feeds directly into his compositional approach, which is all the richer for it. The way his music draws on different Latin American influences seemed such a suitable fit for a guitar concerto, and I was very curious what Daniel’s imagination could dream up in this context.”

Blanch calls Rojas’s compositional voice “wonderfully kaleidoscopic”, and Tierra  “vast, rugged, earthy, kaleidoscopic, profound, an adventure, a fiesta.” The work is a personal piece for the composer, and Blanch says you can feel his heart and soul in the work.

“It can be quite difficult at times.  Complex cross-rhythms between different members of the orchestra are probably the unique challenge. When it’s all working well amongst performers, the way the structure, harmonic progression, instrumentation and everything else comes together produces a very profound and moving effect. I remember in the recording sessions frequently finishing takes of different sections and having the hairs standing on the back of my neck. I love that Tierra is something visceral, warm and affecting. Daniel deserves very high praise for this truly outstanding piece of music. “

Despite the arduous nature of touring, Blanch seems eager to get back on the road again with Tierra. The concerts, of course, are what it’s all about, but he’s energised by all of the connections that with interesting people that he picks up.

“I love when I get the opportunity to have in-depth conversations with people from different parts, finding out history I’m not familiar with and just exploring the ideas that make different people around the world tick. We feel very lucky to have made good friends in all corners, and we look forward to each time we get the opportunity to see them.”

“One of the things you learn when you travel, I think, is the fundamental generosity and kindness in people. It’s a beautiful and inspiring thing that has, more than anything else, made our touring very special.”

Andrew Blanch launches Tierra at Wesley Uniting Church, Canberra on 25 October; Brunswick Town Hall, Melbourne on 27 October; St David’s Anglican Cathedral, Hobart on 4 November; Leichhardt Town Hall, Sydney on 6 November; Sandgate Town Hall, Brisbane on 8 November &  Nexus Art, Adelaide on 10 November.

Tierra is available now on ABC Classic.