Welcome to BackStage Music
BackStage Music is an artist-run concert platform that nurtures the grassroots of creative art music in Australia. It provides a living space to encourage and enable the collaboration of musicians of diverse backgrounds, career stages and interests, in a sonic melting pot of the new.
STORIES OF WATER AND EARTH
7:30pm, Thursday 5 December 2024, Woodburn Creatives Redfern
Darwin based Arafura Music Collective and Sydney’s much loved musical mavericks Ensemble Offspring join forces on the back of their recent Darwin Festival debut with Stories of Water and Earth. A double bill with two astounding front-women, the show features Yuwaalaraay woman Nardi Simpson’s Freshwater Woman alongside a new commission by Djapa woman and winner of the Australian Poetry Slam, Melanie Mununggurr and Netenala Mizrahi. This special show is a weaving together of cultures, chamber music, beat poetry and dreaming stories.
2024 Concert Season
Join us for seven adventurous programs which stretch and shape the classical music experience. Bringing together curators and community leaders from diverse backgrounds presenting stimulating programs that will surprise and delight!
2024 BackStage Season Launch
Starting as a one off event in 2016 featuring New York based new music group y-Music alongside Sydney’s composer-performer emerging artists collective ‘The Music Box Project’ in the basement of an inner city gallery, we quickly realised that there was a demand for the kind of relaxed and musically curious experience. Since then BackStage Music have presented over 50 performances at various venues around Sydney showcasing over 100 performers and 60+ new Australian compositions.
We have been treated to performances by high-calibre international artists in the field of new music including flautist Claire Chase, cellist Ashley Bathgate, violinist Billiana Botchkova, oboist/composer Cathy Milliken and pianist Elisabeth Harnick. Artists based interstate including the Australian String Quartet have also been given a platform for the more avant-garde repertoire on their programs. The real focus of our programming has been supporting NSW artists, highlights have been the virtuoso couple William Barton (didgeridoo) and Veronique Serret (violin); Ensemble Offspring have performed each year, soprano Jane Sheldon, bassist Clayton Thomas and Marcus Whale. Find out more here.