Brisbane Festival Unleash Diverse Line Up

The full program for the 2012 installment of the Brisbane Festival has been announced and once again the musical program is packed with names of the highest quality, delivering a diverse range of musical delights to the people of Brisbane through September.

American indie-rock legend Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks and the perenially underrated Nada Surf are two of the big names who will play the Courier Mail Spiegeltent this year, with psych-folk acolyte Jonathan Wilson also on the bill that features the already announced Julia Stone, Lanie Lane, Archie Roach and Ingrid Michaelson and new names Mia Dyson and Horrorshow.

There is also a family musical component to Brisbane Festival this year, which will see the wonderful Holly Throsby perform See! among other child friendly performances.

Check out our Brisbane Festival 2012 playlist!

Of course the musical component is one small part of the festival, with an enormous arts program that features everything from modern dance to symphonies to comedy to cabaret and so much more

Highlights include: Circa's Dance Energy, Daniel Sumegi and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra performing  Bluebeard's Castle, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will present L'Orfeo, Boundary Street featuring music composed and performed by jazz legend James Morrison, international cabaret sensation La Soirée, featuring the Olivier Award-winning stars of La Clique, including Ursula Martinez and her infamous disappearing hanky and aerial Adonis Bath Boy, the Santos GLNG City of Lights and Sunsuper Riverfire will ignite the sky and The Brisbane Airport International Lantern Garden will light the way to South Bank's Cultural Forecourt.

Comedy will come courtesy of Corinne Grant, Mikey Robins and Greg Fleet, Soap – The Show, will feature eight acrobats, bathtubs, a mop ballet, an opera singer and a rocking soundtrack and from New York, the scandalous Wau Wau Sisters will serve up a sinful night of chaos, cabaret and burlesque, Israel's Vertigo Dance Company will give an Australian premiere performance of Mana and The Hamburg Ballet will perform both A Midsummer Night's Dream and Nijinsky. Dancenorth will present Mass and a star team of artists led by celebrated Australian Director and Choreographer Meryl Tankard will present a new music-theatre work called Mad.

The Theatre line up features the Australian premiere of No Child… from New York's Nijala Sun, La Boite Theatre Company's brand new Tender Napalm and Paul Capsis' one-man play Angela's Kitchen.

Argentinean tango five piece 34 Puñaladas, virtuoso harmonica player Franco Luciani and his four-piece ensemble, and the sensual and chilling vocals of Latin American star Soema Montenegro will have you on your feet, while onthe flipside the Vienna Boys Choir and Austrian septet Mnozil Brass will bring a whole new level of culture to proceedings.

Brisbane's own beatbox master Tom Thum will make his solo debut and acclaimed taiko musicians from Japan and Australia Kodo & TaikOz will join forces for a performance of dynamic drumming.

The Queensland Conservatorium will present Bottesini's World  and Igor Stravinsky's Faustian opera The Rake's Progress led by conductor Alexander Ingram, while Musica Viva present Berlin's Kuss Quartet with acclaimed Japanese violist, Naoko Shimizu.

As usual there will be myriad cross-genre works on display with Brisbane Festival's Under the Radar program presenting hundreds of works by independent artists and collectives.

The festival runs in and around Brisbane from Saturday 8 September through to Saturday 29. Tickets for all events are available from Monday 2 July.