Four Winds Festival 2012
A message from the Four Winds Festival Chair, Sheena Boughen
Welcome to the twenty-first year of the Four Winds Festival – and what a celebration it is! For the very first time, and thanks to our many generous supporters and donors, we have a brand new, permanent Sound Shell that we anticipate will make your Festival experience even better. This is the first stage of developing our beautiful site as Nature's Concert Hall.
The music that Genevieve Lacey has conjured in this Festival's offering is quite magical. She has matched didgeridoos with cello, piano accordion with viola and guitar with oud to create sound sensations. She will have not one but two pianos brought to the Festival site to premiere Damian Barbeler's latest work and re-imagine The Goldberg Variations.
The voices of the Gondwana Chorale will float over Nature's Concert Hall to launch the new Sound Shell. And who could resist the big squeeze when Genevieve herself will play recorder, accompanying James Crabb on classical accordion. They will be joined by a trio of strings in a delectable selection of contemporary classics.
This is a Festival that brings different cultures and different musical traditions together in a wonderful blend of joy and celebration, nowhere better illustrated than by Julian Yu's ingenious Chinese version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
For the Festival of 2014 we will have a new access road leading to the site with a permanent building and amenities at the top of the hill. This means that Four Winds will be able to be much more than a biennial Festival: we will become a cultural hub, a place that the community and the region can use and where they can meet – to hear and see performing artists, to listen and to laugh, to learn and to be involved.
We have already started on this process with our Inspiring concerts, involving local schoolchildren making music with visiting artists, and our highly popular Brain Food series.
Four Winds has come a long way in the last twenty-one years – and we especially would like to honour Neilma Gantner, a founding member and wholehearted supporter of this Festival, whose dream is realised with our new permanent Sound Shell designed by Cox Richardson
We also want to thank you, our loyal audience members, who over the years have sat in sunshine and, occasionally, rain, to listen to the widest range of music, some of it challenging, but always interesting and so often beautiful. You keep on coming back and you tell your friends – and that's what makes this Festival possible.
Last year our Festival won the 2011 APRA/AMC Australian Art Music Award for Excellence in a Regional Location. The Four Winds Festival may continue to grow but we will always work to ensure it remains intimate, joyful, community driven and made possible by our band of dedicated volunteers.
Sheena Boughen
Chair, Four Winds Festival
A message from the Four Winds Festival Artistic Director (2010 and 2012), Genevieve Lacey
Since our last Festival, we've had an extraordinary two years making music in Bermagui. We've sung across the region with 400 local children, transformed a boat into a floating sound installation, welcomed composers into our homes and community to create new music, unearthed a host of quirky, hidden talents among our residents, embarked on a series of walks helping us to listen intently to the sounds and stories of our place, collected a swathe of field recordings, launched a sound archive with the library, dreamt up and nurtured new artistic collaborations, hosted a series of mind-expanding forums, created a unique performance piece to launch the Festival and built our brand new Sound Shell on the Four Winds site.
At the heart of all this activity is our belief in music's ability to bring us together in wonder and laughter, to help us to create beauty and meaning in our lives. Music has allowed many of us with different backgrounds and ideals to meet and to listen to who we are. It has given us space to dream about who we'd like to become.
What you'll hear over our festival weekend is almost all exclusive to Four Winds. By joining us, you'll be present at multiple world premieres, you'll discover new works, new artists, new instruments and new ensembles. You'll hear music you know and love, often in different guises. And you'll hear an utterly inspiring cast of musicians in the most glorious outdoor setting you can imagine.
This weekend is a celebration of this exquisite place and the remarkable community of people who gather here – with my deepest thanks.
Genevieve Lacey
Artistic DireCtor, Four Winds Festival