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Next year’s Sydney Festival will feature a three-day, low-cost blues, funk, roots and soul festival at Tumbalong Park; a new festival hub at Walsh Bay with theatres, bars and late-night cabaret; and a mob of marauding four-metre seagulls scouring the city for hot chips.
With a particular emphasis on music, the 2024 event, scheduled from January 5 to January 28, features 26 world premieres and 43 free events among more than 150 events across the city.
Unveiling the line-up for her third festival, artistic director Olivia Ansell said it would also have a particular emphasis on Sydney Harbour.
Festival director Olivia Ansell at Luna Park, which will be one of the venues for next year’s festival.Credit: Rhett Ryman
“We have the most beautiful harbour in the world but if you’re a Sydneysider you get a bit used to it,” she said. “I’m trying to use our harbour and our river systems through the festival in a different way, an innovative way that even the most jaded Sydneysider would be impressed by.”
One of the harbour-based performances will take place on board Arka Kinari, a 23m schooner powered entirely by wind and sun that has been sailing the globe since 2019 presenting performances that sound the alarm about climate change.
“It’s going to sail here from Yogyakarta to Campbells Cove and present four nights of contemporary music,” said Ansell. “Usually, we meet artists at the airport and welcome them to the festival. This time, I think we’ll be rowing out the heads!”
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Continuing the nautical theme, the Carpentaria lightship, a familiar sight to anyone who has walked around the Australian National Maritime Museum, will host performers from Victorian Opera as they present Puccini’s Il Tabarro over five nights.
And continuing its tradition of using unusual spaces around the city, Luna Park will be the venue for Night Songs with a choir, soloists and chamber orchestra performing work by Poulenc, Stravinsky and Mahler.
The festival will open with the event at Tumbalong Park, dubbed Summerground, from January 5 to January 7 with day tickets at an affordable $89. Included in an eclectic line-up are The Teskey Brothers, Dojo Cuts, King Stingray and legendary funk pioneers Brand New Heavies, backed by a full string section from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
“I believe there’s a huge demographic out there for this type of music,” said Ansell. “People aren’t getting this type of festival in the heart of Sydney.”
At the other end of the CBD, the festival will take over the newly refurbished wharves at Walsh Bay for the duration, temporarily renaming the area The Thirsty Mile.
“It’s a cheeky nod back to the working wharf history of that site,” says Ansell. “But we’re also saying, what are you thirsty to see change in the future?”
Elsewhere, there is a full program of dance works, theatre, circus and cabaret plus a Southeast Asian market at Darlington’s Seymour Centre featuring food trucks, crafts and live entertainment. And then there are those seagulls, provided by Melbourne’s Snuff Puppets, who will pop up when least expected and get their beaks into everything.
Ansell said the breadth of the offering was key to making Sydney Festival - which this year was attended by 420,000 people - a success.
“You can’t take off in any one direction,” she said. “You can’t say we are just going to be a festival of opera or we’re just going to focus on something else. This city is eclectic and diverse. Our role is to be as diverse, robust and exciting right across Sydney as possible with something for everyone.
“Art has the power to heal and gather people together. It can give us freedom of expression to think about tomorrow’s Australia. And I think what an arts festival can do is give people hope.”
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