Born out of the desire to put their beautiful Gundaroo vineyard to use while weddings were off the cards earlier this year, Tallagandra Hill’s series of live music events has proved a smashing success ahead of next month’s Rising Star Music Festival.
Starting out with the wildly popular We Love Local Festival that saw eight gigs performed on weekends from July to September, to date they’ve held 15 gigs – all of which have sold out to capacity.
Tallagandra Hill co-owner Dave Faulks said he’s been unable to ignore the overwhelming response they’ve received to their live music.
“People have been excited to be getting out and about,” he said.
Next month’s Tallagandra Hill Rising Star Music Festival will feature three and a half hours of original live music from five emerging Canberra-based artists.
Lucy Sugerman, Kim Yang, Lisa Richards, Marty K, and Miss M will each perform a set before all five artists come together for a ‘grand finale’ set that the performers have chosen and curated.
“Rising Star was an idea where we wanted to highlight some pretty exceptional musicians, who are not necessarily massively high profile, based in Canberra,” Mr Faulks said.
The artists are all exceptional talents who perform across various genres, and Mr Faulks said the idea of having a diverse musical program has always underpinned their musical offering.
“Over the year we’ve quite deliberately done different genres, everything from a string orchestra and jazz dinner through to rock and country and soul and folk,” he said.
“We’ve wanted to broaden it, both from an audience appeal sense but also as best we could to support as many artists as possible.
“We’re connecting wine, culture and arts … we believe it in terms of both benefit to community and it works for us.”
Lucy Sugerman told Canberra Daily Tallagandra Hill have been “putting so much effort, energy and love into keeping music alive and supporting live music”.
“David and Mary who own Tallagandra have been really dedicated to keeping live music alive and get as much going as they can at the winery with such a tough year due to the bushfires and COVID,” she said.
“They really respect musicians and make sure everyone gets paid and compensated for their time.”
Ms Sugerman played her first gig at Tallagandra Hill back in July and said she is keen to return for the Rising Star Music Festival for an “afternoon of beautiful live local music”.
“They’ve built a really amazing community following and they’re super passionate … They’re lovely people and it really shows through what they do out there.”
Rising Star Music Festival will take place at Tallagandra Hill, Gundaroo NSW on Sunday 13 December 2.30-6pm; click here for more.
