:: Adelaide Festival Centre music events

By: Carmine Pascuzzi

Here is something for those in (or visiting) Adelaide in the coming months. We will keep you up-to-date with music events being staged at the Adealide Festival Centre.

Here is a taste of what to expect.

April 4-6 - Adelaide Festival Centre (Dunstan Playhouse & Artspace)
Adelaide Contemporary Music Festival

This new festival celebrates new classical music from around the world, in the Adelaide Festival Centre's Dunstan Playhouse & Artspace venues. The festival will comprise three innovative concerts featuring both popular classical works from recent years and exciting new music premieres by emerging and established Australian and international composers. The Festival's Artistic Director, Gabriella Smart, is a well-known Adelaide-based pianist and music teacher, and will also be performing in the festival. Other performers include the Grainger Quartet, Telesto Duo, Trio d'anche Suave and Greta Bradman (Sir Donald Bradman's grandaughter) performing works by Andrew Ford, Tristram Cary and a number of other composers.

The final day of the festival also includes a FREE Composers' forum where several of the composers whose works are featured in the festival will participate in an informal discussion, chaired by Professor Charles Bodman Rae from the Elder Conservatorium (Adelaide University).

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April 25 at the Festival Centre Piano Bar, 8:15pm
San Lazaro

Nine-piece Melbourne based Latin Mestizo outfit San Lazaro is the act that starts the party with their horn and percussion heavy salsa funk diaspora. Easily the tightest Latin outfit to come from Australia so far, their members herald from Chilean, Spanish, Indian, Mauritian, Persian, Irish, Greek and Australian backgrounds and bring a refreshing tough, hip-hop, rock and reggae infused edge to the traditional Latin sound.

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June 27 at 8.00pm) & June 28 at 6:30pm
Call to Glory: Mahler Symphony No. 3

Gustav Mahler once proclaimed that a symphony must embrace the world and never was the composer truer to his own dictum than in his monumental Third Symphony. From the ominous primeval rumblings of the introduction, to the sublime, heavenly finale, Mahler traverses all creation in six movements, ranging from elemental power to charming whimsy. This is the premiere performance of Mahler's Third in Adelaide, a showcase for the ASO's exhilarating relationship with its Chief Conductor. Dutch mezzo-soprano, Christianne Stotijn, is one of the most exciting young singers in Europe today; her voice ideally suited to the magic of this symphony.

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July 24-26 at the Festival Theatre, 8.00pm
Australian Youth Orchestra - The Beethoven Festival

Beethoven's music is timeless and arguably some of the best and most passionate music ever written.
Experience the power of Beethoven's Symphonies and Piano Concertos performed by the dynamic internationally acclaimed Australian Youth Orchestra, under the baton of distinguished American conductor, John Nelson (currently the Musical Director of the Ensemble de Paris). They will be joined on stage by the extraordinarily talented pianist, Herbert Schuch (winner of the 2005 London International Piano Competition and first prize at the International Beethoven Competition in Vienna).

Beethoven is the cornerstone of the symphonic repertoire. His music is the culmination of everything that came before him and has influenced nearly everything that has come since. These works were forged out of great intellectual struggle and superhuman intensity. They resound with passion, celebration and innovation. Everyone will recognise at least one theme from these great works. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear the world's most exciting young musicians perform these great works that are the core of western music's cultural achievement.

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August 9 at the Festival Theatre, 8.00pm
Lisa Gasteen & the ASO

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in association with Adelaide Festival Centre’s Symphonic program and State Opera of South Australia presents Lisa Gasteen & The ASO. Australian soprano Lisa Gasteen has conquered many of the world's leading opera houses in the most demanding soprano roles in the repertoire. She is one of a select band of singers whose voices blaze triumphantly through the huge orchestral forces summoned by Wagner and Richard Strauss.

In her keenly awaited return to Adelaide, since her success in the 2004 Ring Cycle, here is a chance to savour her powerful, rapturous singing, tempered with sensitivity, when she performs some of the great moments from those giants of the operatic repertoire.