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Since first being staged in 1986 as the third Spoleto Festival (with Spoleto, Italy, and Charleston, USA), Melbourne Festival quickly forged an unique identity and remains the only festival in Australia to be born from international heritage.
Held over 17 days each October, Melbourne Festival is the pre-eminent destination festival in the nation, ensuring interstate and international visitation by exclusively debuting and premiering some of the finest national and international artists and companies.
Each Festival brings an unparalleled feast of dance, theatre, music, visual arts, multimedia and outdoor events from renowned and upcoming Australian and International companies and artists to Melbourne.
Through excellence, diversity and accessibility, Melbourne Festival presents the best possible artistic experience to as many people as possible. It proudly offers a wide variety of venues and ticket prices, plus many free events.
The 2007 Festival was attended by almost half a million people and included 593 performances that featured 1079 artists from 13 countries.
Kristy Edmunds will direct her fourth and final Festival in 2008. The Artistic Director for the 2009 and 2010 Festivals is Brett Sheehy.

PROGRAM

The Schönberg Ensemble
One of the 20th century's most groundbreaking ensembles present two distinct concerts at Hamer Hall, performing the work of some of the foremost composers of the last hundred years.

Opening Night Celebration
On Opening Night we celebrate artists, audiences and Melbourne itself. Rain or shine, it all kicks off at 6pm and gracing the stage at Federation Square are various bands, musicians and singers whose cultural backgrounds and musical influences make for a remarkable global tour and celebration: ska, reggae, jazz, Latin-fusion, brass, percussion, choral, hip hop, traditional and contemporary music by musicians whose contribution to Australia's music scene is ever-expanding and not to be missed.

Batsheva Dance Company> Three
One of the world's most prestigious dance companies returns to Melbourne Festival with a bold new work that explores three very basic and yet profound themes: beauty, nature and existence.

Batsheva Dance Company> Max
Classic, modern and contemporary dance forms come together with awe-inspiring synergy as the radical physicality of Three is taken even further in this, the newest work from Batsheva Dance Company.

Liza Lim> The Navigator
Dripping with sensuality, The Navigator is a highly charged, emotional work about desire and the journey towards connection and transformation. Director Barrie Kosky brings this provocative opera to life for the stage. Through a complex play of light and costume a world of echoes is created, one that is in juxtaposition with the searing music gloriously performed by The ELISION Ensemble.

The Schönberg Ensemble - Featuring Barbara Hannigan
One of the 20th century's most groundbreaking ensembles present two distinct concerts at Hamer Hall, performing the work of some of the foremost composers of the last hundred years.

Jenny Kemp> Kitten
Kitten's rollercoaster journey from the depths of despair to soaring hope makes for theatre at its most powerful. Love, grief, transformation and yearning manifest without as well as within. Bewitching and unsettling, Kitten is a three-act tale that is at once psychiatric fable, lyrical puzzle and

Back to Back Theatre> Food Court
On the back of an enormously successful international tour with small metal objects one of Australia's most exciting companies returns to Melbourne Festival with the world premiere of an anticipated new work. Part concert, part theatre show, Food Court features the idiosyncratic vision of Back to Back Theatre and the music of The Necks, who improvise a driving score for each performance.

Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely
Melbourne Festival offers a second chance to catch one of the standout acts of 2007: experience the rawness, the rock, the heart, the soul, the sheer energy and humour of Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely.

 DJ Spooky> Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica
DJ Spooky's newest large-scale multimedia performance work is an acoustic portrait of a rapidly changing continent. The Antarctic Suite transforms Spooky's first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass. Field recordings from a portable studio set up to capture the acoustic qualities of ice forms, reflect a changing environment under duress.

Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely Trio
Festival Around Victoria
Fresh from their rocking shows at Becks Bar @ Meat Market, the magnificent Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely Trio come to Bendigo, Dandenong and Frankston.

Patti Smith In Concert
As part of her long awaited return to Melbourne, Patti Smith performs two concerts at Hamer Hall and showcase her new album Twelve and the best from her extensive back catalogue. Experience her spellbinding presence, the raw, grinding energy of her music and behold a living rock legend and band performing live.

Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Dream of Life is a cinematic plunge into the creative spirit of Patti Smith, a breathing collage of her philosophy and artistry. Shot over a remarkable 11-year period by renowned fashion photographer Steven Sebring, Dream of Life is unprecedented in its lyricism and its intimate access to an icon.

Steven Sebring Objects of Life
A fascinating exhibition of photographs and objects inspired by Steven Sebring's time with Patti Smith during the filming of their extraordinary documentary Dream of Life.

 Patti Smith & Philip Glass> Dedication to Allen Ginsberg
Two friends come together for a rare and intimate evening of piano and poetry inspired by their passion for the work of seminal beat poet, the late Allen Ginsberg. A friend and mentor to both Patti Smith and Philip Glass, Ginsberg is one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century whose raw, raging verse epitomised the Beat movement in the 1950s. Smith and Glass shepherded Ginsberg through his last rites, and, as this event testifies, he remains a strong presence in their lives.

Wendy Houstou> Desert Island Dances
Both funny and melancholy, Desert Island Dances explores notions of absence and presence in a piece inspired by the popular BBC Radio program, Desert Island Discs. Wendy Houstoun asks 'Can we imagine or create a 'perfect' place?' If we can, what would it look like? What would we throw away? What would we keep?

Tim Crouch> an oak tree
Some of Melbourne's best-known (and bravest) actors take up an extraordinary challenge!

Tim Crouch> ENGLAND
ENGLAND is about a different kind of empire - one of transmigrations and transplantations. It's the story of one thing placed inside another: a heart inside another person's body, a culture inside another country's culture, theatre inside a gallery, a character inside an actor, a play inside its audience.

Phillip Glass> Book of Longing
An exceptional concert work composed for ensemble, singers, spoken word and imagery featuring new music by celebrated American composer Philip Glass and inspired by Leonard Cohen's recently published book of the same name, Book of Longing is culmination of years of mutual admiration between two of the most celebrated musical artists of their generation.

Kartik Seshadri
Displaying true mastery and exploring the depth and rigor of traditional Hindustani classical music, Kartik Seshadri and Arup Chattopadhyay create a remarkable performance of expressive beauty, rich tonal sensibility and extraordinary rhythmic intricacy.

21:100:100
21:100:100 features 100 works by 100 sound artists produced in the 21st century. This exhibition is the first significant survey in Melbourne to explore and chronicle the extraordinary developments that have occurred in contemporary sound art.

Alex Stahl> echolocation
Sound artist Alex Stahl joins forces with Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey, the dynamic duo behind last year's Musicircus, to create an engagement with the soundworld of the common myna. Beyond the steel and stone across the river, listeners are invited to explore other bridges: mapping connections between free speech and free music, human and avian migrations, performer and audience, natural and constructed environments.

DJ Spooky > Live
To coincide with the Australian premiere of his colossal multimedia work Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid takes to the Beck's Bar for a night of infectious beats and intelligent music as he mixes avant-garde jazz, compositional music and electronica with recordings from vast audio archives.

The Black Arm Band > Hidden Republic
Two of Australia's foremost musical forces come together for an historic event that celebrates songs of tradition that are rooted in hope and resistance from the open heart of Australia's contemporary Indigenous music. Hidden Republic reveals the undiminished spirit in the music of Aboriginal Australia and songs which celebrate identity and understanding for all Australians.

Anne Noble > Ice Blink: Antarctic Photographs
A remarkable exhibition from this major New Zealand artist that explores ideas about photography and the way it is viewed.

Crooked Rib & Aerosol Arabic
Crooked Rib has been collaborating artistically since late 2007. From street art to painting, stencilling to digital technologies, Crooked Rib works with artist Amanda King to express what it means to be young, Muslim and living in Melbourne through this remarkable exhibition of their new works.

Deborah Hay > If I Sing To you
Internationally celebrated choreographer Deborah Hay trained with Merce Cunningham in the 60s and was a member of a group of the Judson Dance Theater that became one of the most radical and explosive 20th century art movements. If I Sing To You is a dance that is also a song, music, poetry and voice. It is held together through innumerable absurdly human moments choreographed and directed to engage the attention of its cast.

 I've Got a Bulletproof Heart: Kenny Mellman is Grace Jones
Utilising only a piano, a drum-machine, a pair of sunglasses and a hoodie, Kenny Mellman (he of Kiki & Herb fame) explores the connection between a gay Jewish piano-player and a black woman with a bad attitude who ruled the disco floors and the airwaves for many a year. Using Grace Jones' own interviews as text, Mellman presents a requiem for the loss of creativity in the nightlife world and a battle cry for resurrection.

FW Murnau's Faust
This 1926 German Expressionist silent film classic was FW Murnau's last German film before emigrating to America and is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Phillip Johnston's original score for Faust was commissioned by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and premiered at the New York Film Festival.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu > Gurrumul
An intimate concert of songs that lament, uplift, inspire and may even bring you to tears.

Interpreti Veneziani Baroque Ensemble > In Concert - Program 1
Playing original instruments, specialising in mostly Baroque music, the talent of the members, their expertise as soloists and ensemble musicians and the high level of performances have earned Interpreti Veneziani an indisputable reputation in Venice.
 
Interpreti Veneziani Baroque Ensemble > In Concert - Program 2
Playing original instruments, specialising in mostly Baroque music, the talent of the members, their expertise as soloists and ensemble musicians and the high level of performances have earned Interpreti Veneziani an indisputable reputation in Venice.
 

Interpreti Veneziani Baroque Ensemble > In Concert - Program 3
Playing original instruments, specialising in mostly Baroque music, the talent of the members, their expertise as soloists and ensemble musicians and the high level of performances have earned Interpreti Veneziani an indisputable reputation in Venice.

http://www.melbournefestival.com.au