Festival success music to our ears
The Albury Chamber Music Festival, November 17, 18, 19, brought visitors from across Australia, standing ovations, foot stamping, and applause is still thundering across the Border.
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With over $70,000 worth of tickets sold - up from the $15,000 from the original festival - the Albury Chamber Music Festival has won a place in the national arts calendar. The final notes of this year's festival had hardly faded before tickets to the 2024 ACMF were already being sold and seats being hotly contested.
It could be that COVID cancellations have made gatherings for fine music in regional Australia explode with popularity or having opera singer Sally-Anne Russell and conductor Dr Mario Dobernig as festival directors, who have international musical connections.
Leading arts patrons and composers from across state borders and large audiences provided a welcome stimulus to the Border economy and with the theme of Favourite Things and World Peace it was a recipe for success. ABC Goulburn Murray's Gaye Pattison interviewed Nance Grant AM MBE, as she launched her book A Life of Curtain Calls during the festival service on Sunday morning and sold $2000 worth of books with all proceeds being donated to St Matthew's Music Association to support scholarship tuition and our most recent young organ student.
The 2024 Albury Chamber Music Festival, November 8, 9, 10, has already invited our patron and chief, the Governor-General of Australia and there will be launches in Melbourne and Sydney as well as Albury because of the wide interest in the whole festival experience.
This year's surprises included the appearance of an alpaca at The Albury Club festival dinner and Sydney International Piano Competition winner, Russian pianist Konstantin Shamray, who delivered an astounding performance that was surely the cherry on the festival cake.
Huge thanks to supporters and local musicians who took part and to local business owners and the community that gave interstate musicians and fine music lovers such a friendly festival welcome.
