World-class musicians to gather for Windfire Music Festival

SACRED music will ring through Geelong next month with the return of Music at the Basilica’s annual Windfire Music Festival.

Now in its 15th year, the festival will run from October 4 until October 13, bringing some of Australia’s finest classical musicians together at awe-inspiring venues across town, including the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels on Yarra Street.

The festivities will begin with The Glory of Brass, a concert performed by the highly accomplished collective Lyrebird Brass – comprising performance staff from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and their students – who have delighted audiences around the globe with their diverse repertoire of chamber music.

This concert will be followed by a celebration of the works of Geelong-based composer Michael Hannan, whose pieces are inspired by Australian flora and fauna.

Music at the Basilica secretary Jane Bashiruddin said Hannan had previously been featured on the ABC’s Gardening Australia television program because all his compositions are based on bird calls.

For an eclectic mix of compositions that spans centuries, she recommended audiences come along on October 11 to Then, Now.

“It starts off with a very ancient piece of music…it’s chant and it’s written by Hildegard of Bingen, and she was an amazing woman, a real genius for her time,” Ms Bashiruddin said.

The concert will bring together a broad range of performers, including the Sonus Ensemble – a Geelong-based wind quintet known for their exciting musical collaborations – and the Geelong String Quartet whose rotating lineup of musicians allows the group to showcase varied experiences and perspectives through their performances.

The festival’s final concert, Sing Joyfully, features young primary school-aged choral singers from choirs across the region, including the NORTH Children’s Choir, a fully funded program for children with outstanding musical potential who face barriers to achieving that potential because of where they live.

“They’re just amazing,” Ms Bashiruddin said.

“You can just start to cry because you can see how much they love singing. It’s really beautiful.”

This year’s program will also be interspersed with a series of free organ concerts, placing the historic instruments housed in churches across the region firmly in the spotlight.

Ms Bashiruddin said this year’s festival had something to please everyone, with the incredible acoustics of the Basilica, which is set to host three of the program’s six concerts, promising audiences an immersive and at times haunting experience.

“It’s a rare opportunity really to come and hear some very interesting music,” she said.

“These are [musicians] who are in our community, and we would like people to come and listen to what’s possible, what they can do. Some of this work is very new – it would have not been performed very often anywhere – so it’s a really good chance to come and hear something a little unusual.”

For more information, to view the full program, or to purchase tickets, head to musicatthebasilica.org.au/music-festival