If you were coming from Sydney for the first night of this year’s Orange Chamber Music Festival, you’d have taken the route through the tiny hamlet of Lucknow, which wraps around the Mitchell Highway. The landscape is marked by these looming metal structures – poppet heads, vestiges of the Gold Rush. Driving back through it after OCMF’s opening night gala, just five minutes down the road from Lucknow, it’s clear the festival’s tapped into some of that Central West gold.

Lior and the Nomad String Quartet. Photo supplied

This year’s gala features a change in venue, and there is a brand-new buzz amongst the crowd to go with it. The Banksia Orange is a classy new frontier for the festival, with a stage draped by white curtains and awash in colourful light for the occasion.

It’s not the only thing new for OCMF: genre-crossing singer-songwriter Lior, who may be an unconventional headliner for a festival that carved its name in fine music. That choice makes for an excitingly eclectic program, spanning classical to contemporary, with a survey of Lior’s own material – including...