Sydney Festival 2014

Just when you thought it was time to relax in the humid and langourous hiatus between the end of 2013 concert season and the start 2014, the Sydney Festival brandishes in front of us dozens of unmissable events for all ages and tastes.

Running in venues in and around Sydney from January 9th to 26th, 2014, the Sydney Festival gives you too many reasons to stay in Sydney for the summer, with theatre and dance, art installations, circus and cabaret, opera and symphonic events. For a city blessed with numerous venues both indoors and out  and reliably good summer weather, the Sydney Festival takes you into Hyde Park to the Festival Village, to the Domain for the Symphony, up in the air, under the water, into the cinema, to Parramatta and a variety of other venues in and around our city.

For classical music followers, there is the Hilliard Ensemble on their farewell tour, joined by viol group Consort Eclectus, the Melbourne-based Renaissance music specialists in their concert at the City Recital Hall. The program includes new works written specially for the Ensemble by composers Gavin Bryars and Nico Muhly. If you can’t make this, they are also playing at The Great Hall at Sydney University on 15 & 16 January.

The team which brought us Koyaanisqatsi (Qatsi Trilogy), director Godfrey Reggio, and composer  Philip Glass have joined forces with filmmaker Jon Kane to create Visitors, described as a cinematic time capsule for the 21st century.

Premiering in Sydney after its premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, conducted by Michael Riesman and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Visitors follows on from 2013’s very successful presentation of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey which was also presented by the Sydney Symphony with the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House illuminated like a galaxy and the movie projected onto a screen behind the orchestra.

There’s the Akademie fur Alte Musik from Berlin in stand alone concerts as well as in the production of Dido and Aeneas; from The Netherlands comes the Apollo Ensemble performing rare treasures from the Jewish Baroque repertoire in the perfect setting of The Great Synagogue.

There’s more – check out the opera and classical programme or the Sydney Festival home page