Latest news with #AdelaideFestival
ABC News
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Adelaide Festival: Ensemble Offspring
Have a stickybeak into a concert celebrating the variety and virtuosity of Australian birdsong from the 2024 Adelaide Festival. Ensemble Offspring presents chamber music they've commissioned over the years from a flock of Australian composers fascinated by their virtuosic avian peers. Birds of all sizes, shapes, and colours, and their breathtaking songs and cries, are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for people from all walks of life, and in the world of music in particular they have inspired mimicry, mockery, and heartfelt homage from creative people who seek to capture and mirror their magic. Get your binoculars out and see what you can spot! Recorded live in concert at the Adelaide Festival in Elder Hall on March 14, 2024 by ABC Classic. Producer Luke Altmann. Engineer Tom Henry. Program Fiona Loader: Lorikeet Corroboree Brenda Gifford: Mungala Nardi Simpson: Of Stars and Birds Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose: Bitter Springs Creek 2014 Felicity Wilcox: People of This Place Hollis Taylor and Jon Rose: N'Dhala Gorge 2014 Gerard Brophy: Beautiful Birds (movts 2 and 3) Robert Davidson: Magpie Riff Artists Ensemble Offspring Claire Edwardes (vibraphone, percussion) Lamorna Nightingale (flute, alto flute) Jason Noble (clarinet, bass clarinet) Find out more Adelaide Festival
The Advertiser
04-06-2025
- Business
- The Advertiser
Festival state eyes climate summit amid debt concerns
A state budget investment will kickstart preparations for Australia to potentially host the world's biggest annual climate change conference. South Australia's budget, to be handed down on Thursday by Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, will commit $8.3 million for Adelaide to get ready for the UN's COP31 summit. The federal government has selected Adelaide as its preferred city to host the event, if Australia's bid for the conference is successful. Analysis shows hosting the event would deliver a potential benefit to SA of $512 million. The budget will fund significant planning for security, transport and infrastructure at COP31, which Premier Peter Malinauskas said would be bigger than the AFL's Gather Round, LIV Golf, the Adelaide Festival and Fringe combined. "To deliver it will take a monumental logistical and planning effort … it is vital that we accelerate that effort and that is exactly what the state budget will do," he said. The budget is the last before the state election in March 2026. Sweeteners are unlikely with the government already locked into two big-ticket, long-term infrastructure projects: the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington tunnels project and the $3.2 billion new Women's and Children's Hospital. Those projects are the main reason SA's debt is heading towards $46 billion in four years. Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the government must prioritise cost-of-living relief. "The Labor government has so far failed to deliver where it's most needed, with South Australians paying record high power bills and struggling with a housing affordability crisis," he said. "There are practical solutions that the Liberal Party have put forward, including stamp duty relief, reintroducing the home battery scheme and scrapping the GP payroll tax grab." The government will be expected to respond to calls for increased support for farmers and rural areas, amid the state's worsening drought. With dams running dry, no sub soil moisture, hay stocks at critical levels and farmers selling livestock, the agricultural sector will be hoping for an increase to the $73 million of support already announced. The impact on the budget's bottom line of the joint state and federal $2.4 billion support package for the Whyalla steelworks, announced in March, will also be monitored. The government has already announced $125 million over five years to remove a level crossing on a key northern suburbs thoroughfare, matching a federal funding commitment to the project. A further $171 million will go towards the expansion of a non-government school loan scheme, to increase eligibility for preschool infrastructure projects before the introduction of preschool for three-year-olds from 2026. The government will spend $13.9 million over five years to expand the Mental Health Co-Responder Program across Adelaide, in which mental health clinicians are paired with a police officer respond to mental health triple-zero callouts. A security task force to combat antisocial and violent behaviour across the Adelaide Metro network will also be rolled out as part of a $9.6 million investment in transport safety. A state budget investment will kickstart preparations for Australia to potentially host the world's biggest annual climate change conference. South Australia's budget, to be handed down on Thursday by Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, will commit $8.3 million for Adelaide to get ready for the UN's COP31 summit. The federal government has selected Adelaide as its preferred city to host the event, if Australia's bid for the conference is successful. Analysis shows hosting the event would deliver a potential benefit to SA of $512 million. The budget will fund significant planning for security, transport and infrastructure at COP31, which Premier Peter Malinauskas said would be bigger than the AFL's Gather Round, LIV Golf, the Adelaide Festival and Fringe combined. "To deliver it will take a monumental logistical and planning effort … it is vital that we accelerate that effort and that is exactly what the state budget will do," he said. The budget is the last before the state election in March 2026. Sweeteners are unlikely with the government already locked into two big-ticket, long-term infrastructure projects: the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington tunnels project and the $3.2 billion new Women's and Children's Hospital. Those projects are the main reason SA's debt is heading towards $46 billion in four years. Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the government must prioritise cost-of-living relief. "The Labor government has so far failed to deliver where it's most needed, with South Australians paying record high power bills and struggling with a housing affordability crisis," he said. "There are practical solutions that the Liberal Party have put forward, including stamp duty relief, reintroducing the home battery scheme and scrapping the GP payroll tax grab." The government will be expected to respond to calls for increased support for farmers and rural areas, amid the state's worsening drought. With dams running dry, no sub soil moisture, hay stocks at critical levels and farmers selling livestock, the agricultural sector will be hoping for an increase to the $73 million of support already announced. The impact on the budget's bottom line of the joint state and federal $2.4 billion support package for the Whyalla steelworks, announced in March, will also be monitored. The government has already announced $125 million over five years to remove a level crossing on a key northern suburbs thoroughfare, matching a federal funding commitment to the project. A further $171 million will go towards the expansion of a non-government school loan scheme, to increase eligibility for preschool infrastructure projects before the introduction of preschool for three-year-olds from 2026. The government will spend $13.9 million over five years to expand the Mental Health Co-Responder Program across Adelaide, in which mental health clinicians are paired with a police officer respond to mental health triple-zero callouts. A security task force to combat antisocial and violent behaviour across the Adelaide Metro network will also be rolled out as part of a $9.6 million investment in transport safety. A state budget investment will kickstart preparations for Australia to potentially host the world's biggest annual climate change conference. South Australia's budget, to be handed down on Thursday by Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, will commit $8.3 million for Adelaide to get ready for the UN's COP31 summit. The federal government has selected Adelaide as its preferred city to host the event, if Australia's bid for the conference is successful. Analysis shows hosting the event would deliver a potential benefit to SA of $512 million. The budget will fund significant planning for security, transport and infrastructure at COP31, which Premier Peter Malinauskas said would be bigger than the AFL's Gather Round, LIV Golf, the Adelaide Festival and Fringe combined. "To deliver it will take a monumental logistical and planning effort … it is vital that we accelerate that effort and that is exactly what the state budget will do," he said. The budget is the last before the state election in March 2026. Sweeteners are unlikely with the government already locked into two big-ticket, long-term infrastructure projects: the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington tunnels project and the $3.2 billion new Women's and Children's Hospital. Those projects are the main reason SA's debt is heading towards $46 billion in four years. Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the government must prioritise cost-of-living relief. "The Labor government has so far failed to deliver where it's most needed, with South Australians paying record high power bills and struggling with a housing affordability crisis," he said. "There are practical solutions that the Liberal Party have put forward, including stamp duty relief, reintroducing the home battery scheme and scrapping the GP payroll tax grab." The government will be expected to respond to calls for increased support for farmers and rural areas, amid the state's worsening drought. With dams running dry, no sub soil moisture, hay stocks at critical levels and farmers selling livestock, the agricultural sector will be hoping for an increase to the $73 million of support already announced. The impact on the budget's bottom line of the joint state and federal $2.4 billion support package for the Whyalla steelworks, announced in March, will also be monitored. The government has already announced $125 million over five years to remove a level crossing on a key northern suburbs thoroughfare, matching a federal funding commitment to the project. A further $171 million will go towards the expansion of a non-government school loan scheme, to increase eligibility for preschool infrastructure projects before the introduction of preschool for three-year-olds from 2026. The government will spend $13.9 million over five years to expand the Mental Health Co-Responder Program across Adelaide, in which mental health clinicians are paired with a police officer respond to mental health triple-zero callouts. A security task force to combat antisocial and violent behaviour across the Adelaide Metro network will also be rolled out as part of a $9.6 million investment in transport safety. A state budget investment will kickstart preparations for Australia to potentially host the world's biggest annual climate change conference. South Australia's budget, to be handed down on Thursday by Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, will commit $8.3 million for Adelaide to get ready for the UN's COP31 summit. The federal government has selected Adelaide as its preferred city to host the event, if Australia's bid for the conference is successful. Analysis shows hosting the event would deliver a potential benefit to SA of $512 million. The budget will fund significant planning for security, transport and infrastructure at COP31, which Premier Peter Malinauskas said would be bigger than the AFL's Gather Round, LIV Golf, the Adelaide Festival and Fringe combined. "To deliver it will take a monumental logistical and planning effort … it is vital that we accelerate that effort and that is exactly what the state budget will do," he said. The budget is the last before the state election in March 2026. Sweeteners are unlikely with the government already locked into two big-ticket, long-term infrastructure projects: the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington tunnels project and the $3.2 billion new Women's and Children's Hospital. Those projects are the main reason SA's debt is heading towards $46 billion in four years. Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the government must prioritise cost-of-living relief. "The Labor government has so far failed to deliver where it's most needed, with South Australians paying record high power bills and struggling with a housing affordability crisis," he said. "There are practical solutions that the Liberal Party have put forward, including stamp duty relief, reintroducing the home battery scheme and scrapping the GP payroll tax grab." The government will be expected to respond to calls for increased support for farmers and rural areas, amid the state's worsening drought. With dams running dry, no sub soil moisture, hay stocks at critical levels and farmers selling livestock, the agricultural sector will be hoping for an increase to the $73 million of support already announced. The impact on the budget's bottom line of the joint state and federal $2.4 billion support package for the Whyalla steelworks, announced in March, will also be monitored. The government has already announced $125 million over five years to remove a level crossing on a key northern suburbs thoroughfare, matching a federal funding commitment to the project. A further $171 million will go towards the expansion of a non-government school loan scheme, to increase eligibility for preschool infrastructure projects before the introduction of preschool for three-year-olds from 2026. The government will spend $13.9 million over five years to expand the Mental Health Co-Responder Program across Adelaide, in which mental health clinicians are paired with a police officer respond to mental health triple-zero callouts. A security task force to combat antisocial and violent behaviour across the Adelaide Metro network will also be rolled out as part of a $9.6 million investment in transport safety.
Perth Now
04-06-2025
- Business
- Perth Now
Festival state eyes climate summit amid debt concerns
A state budget investment will kickstart preparations for Australia to potentially host the world's biggest annual climate change conference. South Australia's budget, to be handed down on Thursday by Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, will commit $8.3 million for Adelaide to get ready for the UN's COP31 summit. The federal government has selected Adelaide as its preferred city to host the event, if Australia's bid for the conference is successful. Analysis shows hosting the event would deliver a potential benefit to SA of $512 million. The budget will fund significant planning for security, transport and infrastructure at COP31, which Premier Peter Malinauskas said would be bigger than the AFL's Gather Round, LIV Golf, the Adelaide Festival and Fringe combined. "To deliver it will take a monumental logistical and planning effort … it is vital that we accelerate that effort and that is exactly what the state budget will do," he said. The budget is the last before the state election in March 2026. Sweeteners are unlikely with the government already locked into two big-ticket, long-term infrastructure projects: the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington tunnels project and the $3.2 billion new Women's and Children's Hospital. Those projects are the main reason SA's debt is heading towards $46 billion in four years. Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the government must prioritise cost-of-living relief. "The Labor government has so far failed to deliver where it's most needed, with South Australians paying record high power bills and struggling with a housing affordability crisis," he said. "There are practical solutions that the Liberal Party have put forward, including stamp duty relief, reintroducing the home battery scheme and scrapping the GP payroll tax grab." The government will be expected to respond to calls for increased support for farmers and rural areas, amid the state's worsening drought. With dams running dry, no sub soil moisture, hay stocks at critical levels and farmers selling livestock, the agricultural sector will be hoping for an increase to the $73 million of support already announced. The impact on the budget's bottom line of the joint state and federal $2.4 billion support package for the Whyalla steelworks, announced in March, will also be monitored. The government has already announced $125 million over five years to remove a level crossing on a key northern suburbs thoroughfare, matching a federal funding commitment to the project. A further $171 million will go towards the expansion of a non-government school loan scheme, to increase eligibility for preschool infrastructure projects before the introduction of preschool for three-year-olds from 2026. The government will spend $13.9 million over five years to expand the Mental Health Co-Responder Program across Adelaide, in which mental health clinicians are paired with a police officer respond to mental health triple-zero callouts. A security task force to combat antisocial and violent behaviour across the Adelaide Metro network will also be rolled out as part of a $9.6 million investment in transport safety.
West Australian
04-06-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Festival state eyes climate summit amid debt concerns
A state budget investment will kickstart preparations for Australia to potentially host the world's biggest annual climate change conference. South Australia's budget, to be handed down on Thursday by Treasurer Stephen Mullighan, will commit $8.3 million for Adelaide to get ready for the UN's COP31 summit. The federal government has selected Adelaide as its preferred city to host the event, if Australia's bid for the conference is successful. Analysis shows hosting the event would deliver a potential benefit to SA of $512 million. The budget will fund significant planning for security, transport and infrastructure at COP31, which Premier Peter Malinauskas said would be bigger than the AFL's Gather Round, LIV Golf, the Adelaide Festival and Fringe combined. "To deliver it will take a monumental logistical and planning effort … it is vital that we accelerate that effort and that is exactly what the state budget will do," he said. The budget is the last before the state election in March 2026. Sweeteners are unlikely with the government already locked into two big-ticket, long-term infrastructure projects: the $15.4 billion Torrens to Darlington tunnels project and the $3.2 billion new Women's and Children's Hospital. Those projects are the main reason SA's debt is heading towards $46 billion in four years. Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the government must prioritise cost-of-living relief. "The Labor government has so far failed to deliver where it's most needed, with South Australians paying record high power bills and struggling with a housing affordability crisis," he said. "There are practical solutions that the Liberal Party have put forward, including stamp duty relief, reintroducing the home battery scheme and scrapping the GP payroll tax grab." The government will be expected to respond to calls for increased support for farmers and rural areas, amid the state's worsening drought. With dams running dry, no sub soil moisture, hay stocks at critical levels and farmers selling livestock, the agricultural sector will be hoping for an increase to the $73 million of support already announced. The impact on the budget's bottom line of the joint state and federal $2.4 billion support package for the Whyalla steelworks, announced in March, will also be monitored. The government has already announced $125 million over five years to remove a level crossing on a key northern suburbs thoroughfare, matching a federal funding commitment to the project. A further $171 million will go towards the expansion of a non-government school loan scheme, to increase eligibility for preschool infrastructure projects before the introduction of preschool for three-year-olds from 2026. The government will spend $13.9 million over five years to expand the Mental Health Co-Responder Program across Adelaide, in which mental health clinicians are paired with a police officer respond to mental health triple-zero callouts. A security task force to combat antisocial and violent behaviour across the Adelaide Metro network will also be rolled out as part of a $9.6 million investment in transport safety.
Sydney Morning Herald
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
In a show for misfits, Seann Miley Moore revels in the power of Hedwig
In the hot, humid almost subterranean sweatiness of an Adelaide summer's night, actor and singer Seann Miley Moore has jumped from the stage of wild rock-fuelled musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch mid-show to prowl the audience aisles. It's a full-house. Rows of perspiring people, many rhapsodically seat-dancing to the live five-piece stage band's performance of the show's thrashing score, some jiggling in blonde wigs and bejewelled denim similar to Miley Moore's costume and wide croissant-like tresses, implore them to come their way. As the show's lead, the East German genderqueer character Hedwig, who has asked us, 'How did some slip of a girlyboy from communist East Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you?' in the show's opening monologue, Moore accepts their pleas. 'Honey,' they say, leaning towards one person dressed in tight gauzy black. They jump to standing. Miley Moore leans closer. Suddenly, a pash, long and deep and entirely unplanned for the audience member, ensues between them. The crowd roars. Miley Moore purrs a guttural 'Whoo!' and the show pulses on. Such is the stage-spilling, passion-inducing and tune-throbbingly raw spectacle of the new Australian production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, produced by GWB Entertainment and Andrew Henry Presents and heading for Melbourne and Sydney after its premiere at the 2025 Adelaide Festival. The next morning, Miley Moore, fresh from a lunch with the South Australian governor, and licking a green ice block in 40-degree heat, says such spontaneous performer-audience moments (Hedwig fans are so passionate they have their own name – 'Hedheads') are to be expected in the show's three-city season. 'That's the power of Hedwig, honey, the power of the wig,' they say. 'They're breathing it all in.' Miley Moore, a contestant on The Voice who went on to star in Miss Saigon, says they are connected heart and soul to the live concert nature of this highly immersive production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. 'It's absolute pride and power up there,' they say. 'It's a rock 'n' roll show, a pride show. It is music. The audience are involved. I'm involved. It's hot and heavy in there. You absolutely feel it. It's been exhilarating, confronting as all hell up there and just such a transformative experience for me. 'This show is an absolute beacon of liberation. It's a trailblazer of queer cinema, queer musical theatre. It's a beacon of such queer spirit, non-binary spirit, trans spirit, of someone finding their true selves. 'It's an absolute liberation for the person you're meant to be in this world.' With text by John Cameron Mitchell and lyrics by Stephen Trask, Hedwig and the Angry Inch – born from a character created in downtown New York clubs in the 1990s and known for a cult 2001 movie (also starring Mitchell) – debuted as a musical off Broadway in 1998. Productions have run in almost 20 countries since, including a multi-Tony Award-winning 2014 Broadway show starring Neil Patrick Harris and, more recently, Mitchell's stripped back 2019 production, The Origin of Love Tour: The Songs and Stories of Hedwig, which they also starred in. In Australia Hedwig and the Angry Inch premiered in 2006, with iOTA winning several awards in the lead role. An aborted 2020 production was to have starred Hugh Sheridan. Blending punk, blues, heavy metal and rock 'n roll, the musical is Hedwig telling her story. Forced into botched gender reassignment surgery as a way to marry an American soldier and flee Berlin, she is left with a dysfunctional mound of flesh, the 'angry inch' (described as having 'a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face' in the musical's song Angry Inch). When we meet Hedwig she is performing a low-rent gig with her band, The Angry Inch, as the US concert tour of rock star Tommy Gnosis plays nearby (heard when Hedwig opens a door on-set). Gnosis collaborated musically with Hedwig before fame (his success comes from those songs) and began a relationship, but he has abandoned her. Aiding Hedwig during her tour is a surly Croatian Jewish drag queen, Yitzhak, played by Adam Noviello, with whom she has a toxic co-dependency. Noviello, who has a long-term love for the film and musical, sees himself in its themes. 'To me, the show, film and the character of Hedwig have always represented the in-betweenness of human beings and of gender, music and expression,' they say. 'Personally, I feel like I've spent my whole career and my whole life on that spectrum. 'The misfits, the losers, we've always felt like that growing up and in our careers.' Seann Miley Moore 'Hedwig is one of those rare beauties of a role where as gender-diverse people, and as trans people and as artists, we see ourselves. She represents our otherness and our fabulousness and our traumas and our battles. So, she's a very big deal for us.' Miley Moore agrees by singing from the song Midnight Radio in the show's finale. ' The misfits, the losers, we've always felt like that growing up and in our careers,' they say. 'But, to do it in this, it's two queens colliding and queer excellence on that stage and we both feel absolute pride and power up there. 'And we're both Scorpios so it's hot.' The musical's songs, from Wig in a Box to Tear Me Down, The Wicked Inch and The Origin of Love, lead much of the show, swinging from full body guttural rock to heart-rending emotional sorrow. In Adelaide's aptly named Queens Theatre, Midnight Radio soars to its ending – ' All the misfits, and the losers/Well you know you're rock and rollers/Spinning to your rock and roll/Lift up your hands ' – bringing some audience members to tears while waving their arms in the warm muggy air. This physical connection to Hedwig begins long before the show's ruched powder blue circular curtain rises above the stage. In Adelaide, a whole trailer park, with wooden refreshment booths under lines of pegged washing, was built outside the theatre as a nod to Hedwig's on-tour life living in a mobile home between gigs. Audience members could visit her caravan, filled with personal effects and memorabilia, before watching a pre-show bar show. Co-directors Shane Anthony and Dino Dimitriadis say this set-up – also planned for Melbourne and Sydney venues – is about transcending boundaries of audience, cast and the stage. 'The show feels big in its themes, big in its appeal to love, big in its appeal to identity and self-searching, big in its appeal to cultures and across different continents,' Anthony says. 'We wanted to make that concrete for the audience, both in the immersive experience provided before the show, but also inside the venue.' Anthony, who vividly recalls seeing the 2014 Broadway production starring Harris, believes Hedwig and the Angry Inch affects people deeply whoever they are. 'It lands in your DNA in a really exciting way,' he says. 'It hits you. You don't immediately understand it, but it taps into something that's more transcendent, more universal, more about the human condition. 'John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask have created something that mines truth and authenticity with characters in a way that perhaps a lot of musicals don't,' he says. 'It's about searching for love and it's done in an incredibly poetic way. 'Those songs are poems. They're explosive, they're dynamic, and I think they resonate with any audience member who's wanting to find love.' As their ice-blocks melt and the sun beats on in Adelaide, Miley Moore and Noviello echo Anthony's words. 'As much as the show is built to and will empower the queer community, it's absolutely a universal story,' Noviello says. 'So much of Hedwig's journey has her caught in a cycle of abuse and now she decides to end that. 'As the show progresses, she's choosing goodness, she's choosing wholeness and choosing love going forward and that's all of our story. We all have to make that decision within ourselves to lead with love and kindness. It's not taught to everyone. 'As much as Hedwig is for queer folks, her story is absolutely for everyone.' Miley Moore lets out a whoop before licking drips of ice-block off their arm. 'And who doesn't love rock and roll baby?' they say. 'Whatever the temperature is, hot or cold, we're dealing with all the elements, all the emotions in there.' They mime a lingering kiss. 'On and off the stage.'
