From the power of choirs to the power of young people, the Adelaide Festival’s new Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie shares her thoughts on next year’s program, and the future.

Five world premiere commissions by composers including Ross Edwards, Caroline Shaw and Brenda Gifford, make up a diverse season, with living composers contributing 70% of the music. 

The UNSW ensemble offers a season lit up by Bach, Ravel, Westlake and Edwards, with guest performers that loom large in NSW and internationally.

Artistic Director Katie Yap presents a crucial path forward for the cultivation of new audiences of Western art music in Australia, as well as providing a much-needed platform for women composers.

This incredibly satisfying program, featuring two world premieres, is dense but good-natured and fondly curated by an intelligent, forward-thinking ensemble.

Over the Easter weekend in April, Bermagui will host some of Australia’s finest musicians from Pinchgut Opera to the Acacia Quartet.

Missy Mazzoli's opera, based on Lars von Trier's film, builds to a devastating finale.

Missy Mazzoli has poured hope and light into her operatic version of Lars von Trier’s film headed for Adelaide. Tom Morris explains how he’s staging it, and why, as a man, he needed the composer’s blessing.

Alongside the golden oldies, not so old dogs deliver plenty of new tricks.

The 27-year-old composer has taken out the US $30,000 award for her piece DOUBLE FACE, which panellist Carl Vine described as “redolent with intriguing musical gestures and textures.”

An operatic adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, a trio of choreographic responses to Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, and choral settings of all 150 psalms are amongst the highlights.

The ACO serves familiar favourites alongside the new in a refreshing season opener.