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Canberra International Music Festival

14 - 23 May 2010

From the Artistic Director

2009 sees a convergence of momentous anniversaries. The 400th anniversary of the telescope, the International Year of Astronomy, the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, Darwin’s 200th, Purcell’s 300th, Mendelssohn’s 200th, Sculthorpe’s 80th, Louis Andriessen’s 70th, Handel’s 250th and Haydn’s 200th of death. The festival will celebrate these milestones and the forgotten genius of Fanny Mendelssohn. We have also dropped our ticket prices to create even greater value.

The festival will bring music to Canberra’s unique architectural spaces: the National Portrait Gallery, Australian War Memorial, National Gallery of Australia, the High Court, Embassies, Playhouse, Albert Hall, and the astonishing Kingston Foreshore’s Fitter’s Workshop. The Australian Institute of Architects will host the Amazing Space series.

Musical highlights include the Dawn Balloon Concerts, The History of Sound for schoolchildren, Peter Sculthorpe’s Rites of Passage, Finland’s legendary vocal group Rajaton, Holland’s PianoDuo, Australia’s golden violinist John Harding and Canberra’s own Howard Penny and Kristian Winther. The 7 hour New Music Marathon continues, and we’ll present over 40 premieres or Australian premieres, including the National Museum’s Elena Kats-Chernin commission and Arvo Part’s celestial late masterpiece, his 4th symphony.

For those who have a thirst for beauty, for those who are in need of reassurance or balm, please come and join us at Canberra’s Autumn Music Festival.

Chris Latham, Artistic Director

From the President of Pro Musica

In a year whose headlines focus on economic crises, floods and devastating bushfires, our hold on sanity comes through focusing on what is beautiful and everlasting. For all of us connected to Pro Musica, music has those essential qualities.

In this, our 15th Canberra International Music Festival, Artistic Director Chris Latham has found wonderful new musicians and exciting new venues to remind us of music's power to entrance, to heal and to unite. There is something for everyone in the program, and an opportunity, too, for us to move from our musical comfort zones and hear something new and different. If we discover its message, we widen our capacity to listen and appreciate. For a festival is not just a series of concerts, it is a total experience, in which good music cumulates over the festival period, as does our familiarity with venues, and our pleasure at meeting old friends and encountering new ones.

The 15th Canberra Festival will be very special. I welcome you to it.

Professor Don Aitkin AO, President Pro Musica

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Last updated: 2/3/2010 10:33:00 AM