In October, Percussion Australia – which is home to Synergy Percussion and Taikoz – will produce the inaugural BOOM! International Festival of Percussion. Opening with a concert at Sydney Town Hall on 1 October, the festival will then run for a week at the Seymour Centre. Celebrating percussion across the spectrum from cutting-edge art music to Afro-Latin, it will include concerts, world premieres, album launches, festival commissions, workshops, talks and free events. Percussionists featured include three generations of Synergy Percussion, Taikoz, Bobby Singh, Louise Devenish, Claire Edwardes, David Jones, Ray Pereira, Nacho Mena, Fritz Hauser, Kaoru Watanabe and many others. Ian Cleworth, the Artistic Director of BOOM!, spoke to Limelight about what to expect.

Ian Cleworth

Ian Cleworth. Photo supplied

Starting with the most obvious question, how and why did the BOOM! Festival come about?

It was one of those crazy lockdown ideas that you maybe think better of later on! But, actually, one of the real upsides of that period was that it gave us a chance to really stop. It gave me the opportunity to think about things. I did some composition and just generally let out [a lot...