From institutional shake-ups to tales of artistic resilience, Limelight’s most-read feature stories of 2025 reveal a sector questioning its structures, celebrating its innovators and coming to grips with the cultural forces shaping Australia’s music and performing-arts landscape.

These are the 10 standout pieces on the people, the music and the moments of 2025 that really captured readers’ attention.

Khaled Sabsabi. Photo © Anna Kucera

1. Khaled Sabsabi, Creative Australia and the fight for artistic freedom

Samuel Cairnduff analysed the year’s biggest cultural flashpoint, arguing that the withdrawal of Khaled Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale exhibition signalled not an isolated controversy but the emergence of a troubling new trend.

2. Wind Power

Limelight went behind the scenes of the University of Melbourne’s three-city Wind Symphony tour, where Associate Professor Jaclyn Hartenberger championed the wind band’s creative agility – from electronics and improvisation to genre-blending freedom.

The University of Melbourne’s Cendrillon, Photo © Ben Fon

3. Cendrillon: A Cinderella story for the...