Port Fairy Spring Music Festival

The Port Fairy Spring Music Festival is a leading classical music festival in Victoria. The festival presents classical and contemporary ensemble music in fresh and collaborative programming. It combines the talents of highly regarded established artists with the very best of Australia's new and emerging young performers and composers.

The ambience and intimacy of Port Fairy together with acoustically excellent venues helps to engage, educate and entertain all members of the Festival community, and to attract visitors from throughout the state, interstate and overseas.

2010 festival of conversation

In 2010, the new Artistic Director, Anna Goldsworthy, has built on the Festival's great tradition of chamber music, while introducing exciting new elements including a theme of ‘conversations', inspired by a letter by Goethe, in which he described a string quartet as ‘four reasonable people conversing'.

‘We will be hearing some of the greatest conversations of the chamber music repertory by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, in performances by groups such as the vibrant young Carducci Quartet from the UK, and the Adelaide-based Kegelstatt Ensemble,' says Ms Goldsworthy. ‘But we take the conversation further, looking at the dialogue between music and other artforms, such as jazz, poetry, dance, theatre, and cinema'.

2010 Festival highlights include:

• Classical music meets pop on Friday night, as angel-voice songstress Katie Noonan joins the Festival String Quartet for intimate renditions of some of her best-loved songs.
• Classical music meets mobile phone for the premiere of The Ringtone Cycle, a new collaboration by composer Graeme Koehne and poet Peter Goldsworthy for soprano piano trio.
• To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth, Seraphim Trio, Lisa Harper-Brown, and Stefan Cassomenos present a candlelit tribute on Saturday evening, titled ‘Nocturne,' featuring some of Chopin's best-loved piano music.
• Soprano Ji Young Yang, a rising star of the American opera scene, joins forces with expatriate Australian pianist Kate Stevens for a celebration of lieder.

The festival program features 20 hour-length performances over three days, from October 8-10.

Full program details and ticket sales are available on the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival website at www.portfairyspringfest.com.au