Welcome from the Artistic Director

Welcome to the 2010 Port Fairy Spring Music Festival.

It is a great joy and honour to be directing the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, both because of my own great memories of Festivals past, as performer, presenter, and audience member, and because of the robust health in which I find it, thanks to my distinguished predecessor, Stephen McIntyre.

In 1829, Goethe sent his friend Zelter a letter, describing a string quartet as 'four reasonable people conversing'. It is in this spirit that I have designed this year's festival, which unfolds as a series of conversations, between musicians, eras, and genres.

This festival is a celebration of the conversation that is chamber music – between musicians, composers, generations and genres. We welcome Graeme Koehne as our featured composer, and are delighted to premiere his new work, The Ringtone Cycle. 2010 is a year rich in anniversaries, and we present innovative tributes to Chopin, Schumann, and Mahler. We also feature dance, cinema, a fifteen-piece brass ensemble, and the opportunity to ‘sing your own musical’, in a diverse program united only by joy – and by conversation.

Anna Goldsworthy
Artistic Director