The AvalanchesPerth Festival returns in February 2027, and today it unveiled the first events in next year’s program.
Leading the music portion of the festival are electronic music pioneers The Avalanches, headlining the East Perth Power Station on Sunday, 28 February. They perform on the final night of the festival, where they’ll showcase their forthcoming album, No Bad Memories, along with career highlights.
Also appearing on the music line-up is the already-announced co-headline tour of Foy Vance and The Paper Kites, performing at the Power Station on its opening weekend on Sunday, 7 February. The former is celebrating his albums The Wake and If, while The Paper Kites are touring in support of their latest album, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It.
Elsewhere, the program has secured the Australian-exclusive season of the production ROHTKO, from the influential Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski.
Based on one of the biggest real-life scandals in art, the production fuses theatre, tech and live cinema to tell the story of a couple who purchased a painting by Mark Rothko for $8.3 million in 2004.
Years later, they discover that the painting was actually by a Chinese maths teacher from Queens known for forging works by Jackson Pollock. The production asks, “Can a fake painting evoke real feelings?” and “What is real art and what is it worth?”
ROHTKO will be held at His Majesty’s Theatre from 5 to 13 February.
Next year’s festival will also feature the part opera, part visual artwork, Operation:Orfeo. Originally created by Hotel Pro Forma, the opera is stripped back and reimagined.
The 2027 production, hosted at His Majesty’s Theatre from 25 to 27 February, will feature the Latvian Radio Choir performing Ib Michael’s parts alongside music by Bo Holten.
Tickets for ROHTKO, Operation:Orfeo and The Avalanches will be available from 12 pm AWST today for Festival Club members. The general sale opens on Friday, 11 September, at 12 pm AWST via the Perth Festival website.
Tickets to see Foy Vance and The Paper Kites are now available.
Perth Festival Artistic Director Anna Reece said of the first events for next year’s Perth Festival, “I’m incredibly proud that two of Europe’s great artistic visionaries will bookend this Festival.
“We open with Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROHTKO, contemporary theatre at its most ambitious, cinematic and audacious, and close with Hotel Pro Forma’s Operation:Orfeo, a work of sublime visual and musical beauty, brought back to life in celebration of Kirsten Dehlholm’s remarkable legacy. Together they represent two very different but equally thrilling possibilities for what live performance can be.”
Reece added, “And at the heart of it all, a reminder that East Perth Power Station is back, our iconic riverside home for summer, with The Avalanches dropping into our line-up. I’m delighted to reveal our opening hand a little early. Clear your diaries. We’re not planning a quiet summer.”
The full Perth Festival program arrives on Thursday, 29 October.
