Over three days in June, the Sunshine Coast Chamber Music Festival (SCCMF) will lure music lovers and experience-hungry visitors to South East Queensland with a program of state and regional premieres and some of the biggest names in classical music in Australia.

Orava Quartet. Photo supplied

Though classical and chamber music is still the festival’s focus (this year’s guest include Elena Kats-Chernin, Tamara-Anna Cislowska, Simon Tedeschi, Alex Raineri and the Orava Quartet), the co-directors of SCCMF 2024, Lynne Bradley and James Lees, have widened the lens in the events fourth season to include leading First Nations, jazz and world musicians. The hope is to create a musical conversation.

“Since its inception five years ago, the festival has simultaneously looked to the origins of chamber music – in the intimate and cosy homes of the artists with no conductor – and forward to what chamber music is becoming in the 21st century,” say Bradley and Lees.

“Long thought of as conversation between instruments, in 2024 SCCMF will extend that conversation to include the audience, celebrating the art of storytelling as artists break with tradition to weave words and music together in an irresistible series of concerts filled with wonder, heart and humour.”

John Bell performs With Love, Amadeus. Photo © Keith-Saunders

Among them is the regional debut of With Love, Amadeus (8 June), a freewheeling collaboration between actor and Bell Shakespeare founder John Bell and classical pianist Simon Tedeschi, in which these two living treasures take turns charting Mozart’s life from childhood and early success, his love affair with Constanze Weber, and his premature decline into poverty and illness.

Among the Queensland premieres is the dazzling 4 Hands, 1 Piano (7 June), in which the ARIA award-winning pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska and the renowned Melbourne-based composer Elena Kats-Chernin take to a single keyboard to play music inspired by family and fantasy and friendship.

A potentially unforgettable Sunshine Coast date night? On 6 June, Orava Quartet will perform works by Schubert, Debussy and the Queensland premiere of Swoop by composer Holly Harrison in a program titled A Night of Romance. Heralded as one of the most exciting young quartets in Australia, Orava is “the Grand Cru of quartets”, according to Limelight, “bold, complex and powerful.”

Tenzin Choegyal. Photo supplied

And for something from an entirely different tradition, Meditate // Anytime, Anywhere (Sunday 9 June) offers listeners an opportunity to experience an immersive sound, music, and nature in a guided walk through the beautiful Maroochy Botanical Gardens in the company of the Grammy Award-nominated artist Tenzin Choegyal, a multi-instrumentalist and singer born in Tibet and raised in a refugee community in Dharamsala, India. He plays the dranyen (Tibetan lute) and lingbu (transverse bamboo flute) in addition drawing on an array of traditional Tibetan vocal techniques in his extraordinary singing.

With a nod to the origins of chamber music, the intimate Sunset Salon (Sunday 9 June) will take place in a stunning home overlooking the beach at Maroochydore, as the sun dips over the horizon.

In partnership with Voxalis Opera, the salon will present a semi-staged recital unveiling the power of love, friendship, and loss through the magic of music by Rossini, Mozart, Loewe and Lehár, sung by baritone Camilo Lopez and soprano Katie Stenzel, and accompanied by pianist Alex Raineri.

The Sunshine Coast Chamber Music Festival 2024 begins on Friday 7 June at 5pm with a First Nations Welcome Ceremony performed at Buderim Village on Kabi Kabi Country.

For more information and bookings, visit the festival website.