An array of rural and outback festivals in Queensland over the coming cooler months is reflecting renewed vigour in the state’s arts sector, with relief at the first shoots of recovery after the devastation wreaked by COVID.

It’s also highlighting a hunger from those beyond the city fringes for the chance to have input into the state’s artistic cultural identity.

From the Australian Chamber Music Festival in Townsville kicking off in July to the Opera at Jimbour event in a beautifully restored homestead over the weekend from May 5, live concerts showcasing classical through to indie blues are heading throughout Queensland’s regions and outback centres.

Queensland Music Trails has expanded to become a music festival and road trip combined, deliberately bucking the trend of other major events around Australia. Instead of seeking out major hot spots and inner city hubs, the trails have opted to visit the smaller, lesser known, hidden gems scattered across the state.

Opera Queensland has also expanded its offerings for this year’s Opera in the Outback Festival, from a one off performance just two years ago when it launched to now becoming a week of shows from Longreach to Winton, including an Opera Ball at Smithy’s Camp at Longreach.

It’s a deliberate strategy from Opera Queensland CEO and Artistic Director Patrick Nolan, who said they are proud to hold the mantle as a national leader in regional programming, and get out of their city confines to take world class productions beyond the state’s saturated south-east corner.

Nolan said Opera Queensland feels this responsibility keenly as Queensland is the only state where more people live outside the capital city than within it.

“The motivation behind the festival was born out of experiencing the wonder and the majesty of those Outback skies. Have you been out to Longreach? Spiritual is a good word for it – and obviously we think of opera as having really strong emotional, spiritual energy,” Nolan said.

“So we went out there in ’21 and we were wonderfully surprised. I mean, we knew that there was something about it, but we didn’t anticipate that people would come from all over Australia.”

The calibre of performers for festivals such as Opera in the Outback is such that it’s not only boosting the spirits of locals with world class performances, it’s also attracting city people to go off the beaten track.

Such as the return of guests like world renowned conductor Vanessa Scammell, who can’t wait to be serenaded again by Queensland’s big sky country.

“In Winton I looked out behind me and suddenly I realised we’re up on this huge natural occurring concert stage. I could just see this incredible landscape in front of me,” Scammell said.

“And next minute there’s the card tables and the eskies and the champagne glasses and the hats and they sit down and it’s just an amazing gathering of people who join together for this occasion. Many who never had an interest in opera, which I think the most amazing part of this is.

“And I think what is really important to note too is the artists – this wonderful list that we have of Emma Matthews and Milijana (Nikolic) and Jose (Carbo) and Jud (Arthur), we’re talking A grade international artists.

“These are singers that you would be sitting in an opera theatre somewhere in Italy, to have to pay and see some of these people and here they are coming outback. So there’s a real respect I think that Opera Queensland and Patrick are all trying to put together for the people in the regional areas to show them the best that we have.”

Scammell said the calibre of the shows even made the greatest challenges of outback performances worthwhile.

“It can turn into quite an activity of just managing to turn pages at the right time with rocks and whatever other weights you can find in the surrounding spaces,” she said.

“I remember in Winton, the flies! I walked onto stage and everyone had those fly hats, the ones that completely cover your face. And I’m thinking, who are these people and where am I? But I soon understood why people were wearing them.”

Patrick Nolan has made some changes to Opera in the Outback concert venues after learning through experience that even operatic events don’t bring a halt to important outback business.

“In the first festival we were out the back of the Qantas Founders Museum and out the back of the first Qantas hangar and that that had its own magic,” he said.

“But they said to us, there is a risk, if a plane needs to take off, we’ll need to stop the concert. But because you’re doing it on a Saturday night, it’s very unlikely so take the risk.

“And of course we got half an hour into the concert, all of a sudden sirens started going and an engine started up and someone had decided that they needed to fly to their property. So we had to have an early interval, which was part of the magic.

“This year we’re doing Sing, Sing, Sing – where basically we gather in a pub and we teach people a famous opera chorus. In Winton, we’re in the North Gregory Hotel, which is where – so legend has it – Banjo Patterson wrote Waltzing Matilda. And in there, is apparently a piano that there is some claim that that is the piano that it was first sung on.

“I’m not sure about the authenticity of that but we’ll accept the legend for what it is.”

And the performers are finding it’s worth their while as well. Blues and roots indie band Busby Marou will play the tiny hamlet of Cape Hillsborough, about half an hour’s drive north of Mackay, for the first time as part of Queensland Music Trails.

They have long loved playing the remote locations to remind themselves of their Rockhampton beginnings, but Jeremy Marou said this approach has the added bonus of also proving increasingly profitable.

“Yeah, we’re very excited. I mean, we’re proud Queenslanders as it is, and we’re proud to be from a small town in Central Queensland as well,” Marou said.

“We’ve always been a huge advocate for pushing live music in the regional towns and people were starting to clue on. We’ll go to Biloela on a Thursday night and have 700 people turn up on a show and it just blows their mind.”

Marou said to start with, it was a gamble.

“It’s like, oh, do we go to these little towns? We’re not going to make any money. But it’s definitely paid off,” he said.

“We learnt a lot from Kasey Chambers. Kasey, she goes where people wouldn’t naturally tour, but we’ve found that it can be very successful.

“People love it, they love getting out and we’ve really, I guess, formed a bond with these regional places and we’ll continue to do it forever.

“We would rather do a 500 cap (capacity) room in a little regional town compared to a thousand people in Sydney. Just the feeling we get from these little places – it’s incredible.”

This is the second year that renowned international violinist Jack Liebeck is leading the Australian Chamber Music Festival in Townsville. Part of the attraction for him is bringing internationally respected musicians to play five world premieres with the stunning backdrop of Queensland’s reef country.

“We’ve got a new piece from Sally Beamish who’s our Composer in Residence, I know her music, she’s one of the world’s leading composers. And we have our new piece from William Barton, our legendary didgeridoo player and all round musician and I think he’s a great genius,” Liebeck said.

“We’ve got a young pianist composer called Joseph Halvat, he’s an Australian from Tasmania, who lives in the UK and spent the first 10 years of his professional life in the UK – he’s written us a piece, but we also have our speaker and composer Stephen Johnson writing us a piece.

“And the fifth is Deborah Cheetham’s long delayed piece that was written for a couple of festivals ago and we haven’t managed to perform it yet. We’ve got that plus many other pieces that maybe haven’t been performed in Australia before as well.

“And so it’s kind of unique on the scene in that we bring in 35 to 40 musicians and everyone just plays together in a kind of ad hoc chamber music way. There are one-off performances that you’re not going to hear anywhere else in the world with people collaborating.

“It’s really fun for me to curate that and put people together in groups to think who’s going to well together.”

Queensland Symphony Orchestra is also hitting the road, going to Gladstone for Symphony Under the Stars on May 19, with more than 3000 people expected to attend.

It will feature music from some of the world’s most famed composers such as Strauss, Puccini, Elgar and Verdi, with the orchestra performing pieces from Madam Butterfly, Carmen, Tosca, La Bohem and Aida under the baton of QSO’s Principal Guest Conductor Johannes Fritzsch.

Queensland Symphony Orchestra performs its Symphony Under the Stars.

Joining the orchestra will be Soprano Rebecca Cassidy, and Tenor Rosario La Spina to create a night to go down in Gladstone’s musical history.

QSO CEO Yarmila Alfonzetti said the orchestra will also take the opportunity to perform a special education concert for local primary students featuring Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

“Symphony Under the Stars will be a wonderful non-stop adventure through music that has thrilled audiences for decades including excerpts from some of the most famous pieces ever written, all in one concert,” Alfonzetti said.

For those wanting world class opera a bit closer to the capital, Opera at Jimbour will celebrate its 20th anniversary with its biggest ever program as part of Queensland Music Trails.

This year’s event at historic Jimbour House includes exquisite chamber music under the twinkling lights of the old plane Hanger, and intimate recitals inside the opulent Drawing Room, bringing the grand old home to life with the sounds of revered artists such as Daniel De Borah, Lotte Betts-Dean, Carlos Barcenas and Paul Dean.

Paul Dean’s original composition, Australian Song, will have its world premiere at the event, along with the more familiar melodies of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Beethoven’s Moonlight Piano Sonata, Barber’s haunting Adagio for Strings and Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

Queensland Musical Trails has evolved from what festivals were perceived to be decades ago, with CEO and Creative Director of Queensland Music Trails Joel Edmondson saying that means instead of taking a youth-focused music festival to the heart of Brisbane, the trails take the same festival to a beautiful field surrounded by mountains in the Scenic Rim. And rather than just drawing music fans in from outer zones, the trails aim to take the music to the regional centres that don’t always have access to world class events.

“I think it really began originally as a way of reinventing what the Queensland Music Festival was for 20 years, for a much different world than in 1999 when it was first designed,” Edmondson said.

“Certainly with the closure of international borders and this refocusing of Australians discovering their own backyard and the importance especially of regional Queensland in creating a genuine cultural tourism framework that lots of different communities could benefit from, that became a logical direction for us to go in.

“And then again, to reassert that the Olympics in 2032, we’re going to have people from around the world coming here. And as it stands, we’ve got a lot of great arts and culture companies and activities around the state, but there’s nothing that kind of ties the whole state together. So this is about creating a platform to tell a diverse set of stories about what Queensland is, what it stands for, and to give people an experience of that.”