Illuminate Adelaide has announced details of its 2024 program, an intersecting array of light, music and technology taking over the city from 4–21 July.

Among this year’s music highlights are Dutch pianist Joep Beving, British electronic musician Max Cooper, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, Australian bassist Helen Svoboda and UK artist The Caretaker.

Joep Beving performs Hermetism. Photo supplied

Creating “accessible music for complex emotions”, Beving captured the public’s attention in  in 2015 after streaming his debut album Solipsism for fun. Played on an upright piano Beving inherited from his grandmother and recorded in his kitchen, it attracted 85 million views and caught the ear of Deutsche Grammophon’s A&R manager Christian Badzura, which in turn led to the signing of Beving to the world’s foremost classical label and the release of a sophomore album, Prehension, in 2017.

Beving will perform his latest release, Hermetism at Her Majesty’s Theatre on 18 July.

In an Australian-exclusive performance during his world tour, Belfast-born, London-based musician, artist and geneticist Max Cooper brings his 3D AV phenomenon to Illuminate Adelaide. Touted as his most ambitious work yet, 3D/AV blends electronic music, visual art, scientific enquiry and gauze screens to create a mind-melting immersive experience. For this one-off performance at Hindley St Music Centre on 12 July, Cooper will be joined by Motez, a boundary-pushing club producer with roots in classical piano.

Operating under the Illuminate umbrella, the experimental music festival Unsound Adelaide returns to the city’s Dom Polski Centre (19–20 July) with a line-up including Kim Gordon, former bassist with art rock pioneers Sonic Youth, British ambient musician The Caretaker (aka James Leyland Kirby, who makes his Australian debut here) and Japan’s ∈Y∋, one of the creative forces behind the legendary Osaka noise rock band BOREDOMS.

The Australian collaboration Yirinda, Shanghai’s 33EMYBW, UK artist Lee Gamble (collaborating with Spanish choreographer/action artist Candela Capitán), Norwegian saxophonist/performance artist Bendik Giske, and the Japanese multi-instrumentalist Eiko Ishibashi – in partnership with US producer and musician Jim O’Rourke – also feature.

Helen Svoboda. Photo © Celeste de Clario

At Nexus Arts, Lion Arts Centre on 6 July, Helen Svoboda will showcase her skills in a solo performance exploring the melodic potential of the contemporary double bass via extended techniques and vegetable-themed compositions.

Also at Nexus Arts (12–14 July), Fill the Earth presents seven stories about how we fill our world, spaces and lives in a work in which a giant caterpillar births green balloons, a man negotiates a door and a woman creates a garden from dead branches.

Adelaide’s MOD will host a free screening of Miyazaki’s 1984 animated classic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and an exhibition, BROKEN, that encourages viewers to imagine new ways of being.

Art and science converge at the world premiere of Superluminal, a family-friendly interactive installation from the award-winning Patch Theatre made to spark wonder in the minds of younger children visiting the South Australian Museum between 6 July–10 August.

City Lights: ChronoHARP. Photo supplied

Illuminate’s free program is centred on its City Lights initiative, featuring 40 installations and projections festooning Adelaide’s CBD from 5:30pm each night. Family-friendly after-dark highlights include the huge, dynamic (and warming) Fire Gardens, an installation of 7000 flaming clay pots created by France’s Compagnie Carabosse, the towering ChronoHARP (a walk-through, multi-player instrument that reverberates with light and sound) and a menagerie of life-like ancient creatures roaming the precincts of Adelaide Zoo.

Illuminate Adelaide, 04 – 21 July 2024