The 2022 Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF) is nearly upon us once again, and this year, artistic director Roland Peelman has set out to create a program reflecting the notion of polarity.
This year’s tagline, ‘Pole to Pole’, permeates the entire festival, with Peelman telling Canberra Daily he’s long wanted to explore “the extremes of the world, and everything in between” at the CIMF.
“The festival itself for many years now, has reflected the notion of pole to pole, from one experience to another, it’s not just a classical musical experience,” he said. “There’s a huge variety of tastes, experiences, and what people expect from music.
The 2022 festival also contains a strong environmental aspect: “I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time now a festival around our environment, our natural environment, and what’s happening with our planet,” Peelman said.
“The festival is all about that really; it has great, ancient statements about the world and the universe, and the creation of the world … and at the same time, we’re doing new work that throws new light on all of it.
“It’s very broad as an experience, and people take from it what they want.”
Soundwalks through various spots around Canberra will explore our sound ecology.
““it’s a different pole in our experience, it’s a different pole of engaging with our environment.”
Another large component of CIMF is taking music to places “you don’t necessarily expect it”.
Performances, spanning large-scale shows to small, intimate experiences, are scheduled for a variety of venues often not associated with live music: Fyshwick’s BlocHaus bouldering centre, a yoga studio, the Australian National Botanic Gardens, and right beneath the Parliament House flagpole.
“They’re the most extraordinary environments, it’s anything but a concert hall,” Peelman said. “All of that creates something really special, it’s the kind of thing we can’t do throughout the year.”
But this idea is, once again, something that’s long existed within CIMF. Its main venue, The Fitter’s Workshop in Kingston, is itself a repurposed industrial building.
“It’s a very plain building, but it sounds amazing and it’s a great thing every year to fit it out into a very unusual concert hall,” Peelman said.
The festival’s rich, varied program incorporates performances ranging from large-scale to intimate, and spanning genres from hip-hop to classic cello.
“We want the festival to be relevant, clearly, to as many people as possible, and we want it to be relevant to the city,” Peelman said.
The 2022 Canberra International Music Festival runs 29 April to 8 May at venues across Canberra.
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