Australian Festival of Chamber Music (Townsville)

I remember thinking when I reached the age of twenty-five (which felt indubitably OLD) “I’m a whole quarter-century old, what am I doing with my life?’ That birthday felt like a defining moment of some sort. Well, the AFCM is now at the same point and I think we can claim it has achieved rather a lot since its inception in 1990 and that it’s time to celebrate. I hope the 2015 program both carries on established traditions and introduces a new flavour or two; that it has a party feeling about it, but continues to do what it does best – presenting an intriguing mix of chamber music performed by personable, top drawer performers. In recognition of the AFCM’s milestone birthday, we’ll host a free public concert in the Queens Gardens along with the Townsville City Council. We are delighted that the Barrier Reef Orchestra and the 1RAR Band will join us on that occasion.

It is a great coup for us that the AFCM has this year secured a grant from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, to bring the legendary pianist Piotr Anderszewski to the festival for his debut appearances in Australia. He is one of the most interesting and probing musicians around today – and his only Australian appearances will be in Townsville.

We also welcome Theodore Kuchar, the founding director of the AFCM, who will join us for the second week of the festival. Dozens of audience members and artists will enjoy reconnecting with him during his first return visit to Australia since 2006.

Returning artists include the Australian Brass Quintet, William Barton, the Camerata of St John’s, Tamara-Anna Cislowska, Michael Collins, Timothy Constable, Nicholas Daniel, Amy Dickson, the Goldner String Quartet (now officially our ‘Quartet-in-Residence’), David Harding, Louise Hopkins, Jack Liebeck, Lorna McGhee, Neal Peres da Costa, Li-Wei Qin, Michele Walsh and Matthew Wilkie. To all of them, we extend hearty greetings – but also to the many artists new to the festival this year. Rainer Hersch, the British classical music comic and Gerry Connolly, the Australian one, will add their inimitable humour to proceedings. We’ll present three world premieres: Elena Kats-Chernin’s The Three Dancers, a new dance suite co-commissioned by AFCM and Dancenorth and four other international festivals, receiving its London premiere by the Rambert company in September; David Sampson’s Memories To Keep Awhile, commissioned by trumpeter David Elton; and Townsville-born Robert Keane’s Music for John Bell, a woodwind quintet based on Shakespearian characters. Rather than having a Composer-in-Residence this year, we are thrilled that these three composers will be with us for their premieres. We shall also present a number of performances in memory of the late Peter Sculthorpe, who passed away during the 2014 AFCM. Other composers whose anniversaries we salute this year include Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915), Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936), Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) and Jean Sibelius (1865-1957).

Our ‘day off’ event will be a sociable long table lunch on the Strand. A second Concert Crawl and other anniversary touches mean there will be plenty for you to digest in this year’s brochure! I look forward enormously to our annual catch-up. It will be a great joy to welcome our many returning subscribers and also to greet visitors new to the Australian Festival of Chamber Music. Let’s party!

Piers Lane AO
AFCM Artistic Director

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