Having announced a circus extravaganza in the new cultural hub of Parramatta yesterday evening, Sydney Festival 2017 have now revealed the highly-anticipated, stellar full program for one of the biggest events on Sydney's cultural calendar. Led by headline shows from legends Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and PJ Harvey, it's a doozy.
With over 150 events across three weeks, Sydney Festival will boast 16 world premieres, 9 Australian premieres and a whole lot of shows exclusive to Sydney Festival.
Succeeding Belgian festival director Leiven Bertels, brand new Aboriginal-Australian festival director Wesley Enoch is at the helm this year, having come from a background of theatre directing for the Queensland Theatre Company.
Shining stars and music icons Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds will be headlining the music program with their latest and highly-acclaimed, Skeleton Tree, in tow. Seminal English muso PJ Harvey will also head over with a 10-piece band for her first shows in Australia since 2012, with The Hope Six Demolition Project front and centre at the concerts. The music program's St Stephen's Music component will also feature shows from electronica/folk/soul artists such as Moses Sumney, Szun Waves, Dori Freeman and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
For classical music fans, Sydney Symphony Orchestra will be staging a free concerts Symphony Under The Stars and Opera In The Domain at Parramatta Park and The Domain respectively, as well as the SSO's tribute to Finnish composer Rautaavara. You can also catch the world's fastest pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, Croatian ensemble Dalmatica bringing medieval chants to your ears and Canadian Nicole Lizee with The Australian Art Orchestra in Sex, Lynch & Video Games: An Exploration Of '90s Screen Culture.
Unsurprisingly Enoch is bringing a strong Indigenous Stories component on board next year, with playwright Nathan Maynard penning a play called The Season to be performed by an all-Indigenous cast. A concert at the Sydney Opera House will also mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Indigenous Rights referendum, while Bayala — Let's Speak Sydney Language is a project that works with local Eora and Darug elders on celebrating their native tongues.
Another focus of the Sydney Festival is sensory enhancement and deprivation, with immersive exhibition Scent Of Sydney by olfactory artists Cat Jones, Imagined Touch by deaf-blind artists Heather Lawson and Michelle Stevens and the award-winning, critically-received The Encounter by Theatre Complicite all part of the arts program. Having blown London critics out of the water, the show features binaural technology to portray the story of a NatGeo journalist lost in the Amazon — all through a pair of headphones. The Encounter comes direct from Broadway and will open at Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne shortly after.
And for the Instagram fanatics, photo ops a-plenty are offered by The Beach, an installation created with 1.1 million recyclable polyethylene balls at the Barangaroo Reserve that you can dive into, and Hyde Park's House Of Mirrors, which is exactly as it sounds.
For full details of the Sydney Festival 2017 program, head to their website. Sydney Festival will take over Sydney from January 7 to January 29.
