For the 18th annual Bangalow Music Festival, Artistic Director Tania Frazer is seeking to dismantle the stigma of elitism attached to chamber music, opening it up to brand new audiences.
As the AD for Bangalow Music Festival since 2011 and also the oboist in Southern Cross Soloists – the group that owns and operates the festival – Tania says her focus is on providing a more meaningful connection between musicians and listeners. “I think something that really important to us at Southern Cross, and you see it in the festival as well, is we want to break down any walls between the musicians on stage and the audience so that they can feel they are there in it with us,” Tania says.
“We also want to break down any illusion that [chamber] music is elitist because people can often be scared or of it, or think they don't like it, or think they don't understand it but they actually know more about it than they realise.”
The 2019 programme for Bangalow Music Festival features a broad selection of performances set around the theme of 'conversations though chamber music' that engage musicians and audiences in a musical dialogue.
“Our main thing is to bring the audience into the equation, so it's a 360-degree immersive experience,” Tania says, “... the audience get to see a little more of the person up on the stage; you've not just got your eyes on the music.”
Tania Frazer - Image © Stephen Henry
This year, Southern Cross Soloists are celebrating their 24th year as an ensemble. Tania explains that one of the main objectives of Southern Cross and by extension the Bangalow Music Festival, is to make classical music more accessible.
“Chamber music started in the drawing rooms of aristocratic Europe... and so it came from a very elite place but the nature of our group is exactly the opposite,” she says.
“We have a very random group of instruments; there's isn't any standard repertoire written for our group and there certainly aren't all those famous 200-year-old German composers who write 50-minute pieces. Just by the nature of who we are, we're already not traditional.”
It's the straying from strict, traditional conventions of classical and chamber music that Tania believes has allowed both the ensemble she plays in and the festival she curates to thrive and prosper.
At the 24-year mark for Southern Cross Soloists, Tania certainly has her work cut out for her trying to find time for everyone on the line-up to shine as brightly as she believes they should.
“We've now got seven people who are all soloists in their own right and any one of them could stand up and play a concerto, so I'm always wanting to feature them and really highlight each of their virtuosity,” she says.
The 2019 programme for Bangalow Music Festival will also feature the Orava String Quartet and New Zealand Chamber Soloists as well as classical guitar master Karin Schaupp.
Image © Stephen Henry
In honour of the guitar, Tania has curated as special presentation featuring Karin that reveals some of the history behind what is perhaps the most iconic instrument in existence.
“The guitar is an interesting instrument,” Tania says.
“Nearly every culture in the last 2,000 years, if not longer, has had a guitar-type instrument... So that concert will follow a little bit of the modern history of the guitar, starting 450 years ago with some Renaissance music, then following it through up to present day and talking about how it's changed, the influence of music on its repertoire and just a little bit more about an instrument we now take for granted and that has now become a major rock instrument as well.”
