Financial concerns arise after Executive Director checks himself into a medical institution.

The announcement on Tuesday that the inaugural Sydney Sings Festival would be postponed owing to the “unexpected illness of the Event Owner and Executive Director, Mr Jarrod Carland” shocked and disappointed the Australian arts scene. The new festival had been substantially funded by Destination NSW and it was hoped that it would attract up to 11,000 visitors and earn $5 million of revenue. It now appears that Carland’s sister company, Brisbane Baroque Ltd, has failed to pay the majority of the artists who took part in the Queensland early music festival last April, and that Carland checked himself into a medical institution in Victoria as long as four weeks ago.

A former actor and experienced arts administrator, Carland has worked in tandem with Artistic Director Leo Schofield over five years on the successful Hobart and Brisbane Baroque festivals as well as on Sydney Sings, but Limelight understands that only a handful of the artists have received payment for this year’s event. Despite repeated attempts to contact Brisbane Baroque Ltd, major organisations like the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Antipodes and the Camerata...