Festival Director: Lieven Bertels

The 2014 Sydney Festival was awash with Australian premieres and sold out shows, with a mix of ticketed and free programming. This year’s Festival included a renewed focus on classical music and large-scale visual arts projects. Two hugely popular installations were Sacrilege, Jeremy Deller’s inflatable Stonehenge, and Merchants Store, Leandro Elrich’s gravity-defying interactive artwork.

Highlights included everything from intimate musical discoveries in the Spiegeltent early music series to the unique suburban spiritual tour The Calling, the centrepiece Baroque dance opera Dido & Aeneas and the world premiere of Black Diggers (pictured above), a co-production with Queensland Theatre Company, directed by Wesley Enoch.

In western Sydney, Parramatta hosted the world premiere of the international family show Band of Magicians and a sell-out music season at the Riverside Theatres.





THEATRE & DANCE

Dido & Aeneas

Sasha Waltz & Guests, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and Vocalconsort Berlin

Choreography by Sasha Waltz

Music by Henry Purcell

Black Diggers

Queensland Theatre Company and Sydney Festival

Directed by Wesley Enoch

Written by Tom Wright

La Voix Humaine

Toneelgroep Amsterdam

Directed by Ivo Van Hove

AM I

Shaun Parker & Company

Band of Magicians

Justin Willman, Nate Staniforth, Justin Flom and James Galea

The Shadow King

Co-created by Tom E. Lewis & Michael Kantor

Directed by Michael Kantor

Malthouse Theatre

Othello: The Remix

Written, directed and performed by GQ & JQ

Developed with Rick Boynton

Chicago Shakespeare Theatre & Richard Jordan Productions Ltd

Okham's Razor

Ockham's Razor

Chi Udaka

Taikoz and Lingalayam

The Piper

My Darling Patricia

Funpark

Karen Therese and the Community of Bidwill

All That Fall

Pan Pan Theatre



The Serpent's Table

Griffin Theatre Company and Performance 4A

Oedipus Schmoedipus

POST and Belvoir

Lao Qiang

Zhang Family Band

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

Apollo Ensemble

Symphony in the Domain

Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Simone Young and John Bell

The Hilliard Ensemble

OPERA

The Turk in Italy

Opera Australia

CIRCUS & CABARET

Scotch and Soda

Company 2 and the Crusty Suitcase Band

Amanda Palmer

LIMBO

Strut & Fret, Underbelly Productions and Southbank Centre

La Cucina dell'Arte

Circus Ronaldo

Lady Rizo

FILM

Spirit of Akasha

Featuring surfers: Stephanie Gilmore, Beau Young, Mick Fanning, Kelly Slater, Tom Curren

Featuring musicians: Grouplove, Ben Howard, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, The Windy Hills

Visitors

Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass and Jon Kane with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra

EXHIBITIONS & INSTALLATIONS

Chance

Christian Boltanski

Merchants Store

Leandro Erlich

Sacrilege

Jeremy Deller

The Very Near Future

Alex Davies

ABOUT AN HOUR

Forklift

Kage

Gudirr Gudirr

Marrugeku

Bullet Catch

The Arches and Rob Drummond

His Music Burns

Sydney Chamber Opera

Cadavre Exquis

Kassys

I, Malvolio

Tim Crouch

The Redux Project

Richard DeDomenici



MUSIC

Amadou & Mariam

Ambrose Akinmusire

Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet

Andrew Weatherall

Ben Caplan & The Casual Smokers

Big Star's Third

Jody Stephens (Big Star), Mile Mills (R.E.M.), Ken Stringfellow (The Posies), Mitch Easter (Let's Active), Chris Stamey (the dB's) and vocalists Skylar Gudasz, Brett Harris and Kurt Vile

Bombino

C.R. Avery And The Sojourners

Chris Thile

Colin Stetson

Dom Flemons

Donny Benet & The Donny Benet Show Band

Eclipse

Amadou & Mariam

Edwyn Collins

Funki Porcini

Hot Dub Time Machine

DJ Tom Loud

Hurricane Transcriptions/Laborintus II

Lee Ranaldo, Mike Patton, Ensemble Offspring XL, The Song Company and conducted by Roland Peelman

John Murry

Kurt Vile Solo

Lee Fields & The Expressions

Matmos

Paradiso Lates

Paradiso: Future Classic

Jacques Renault, Medlar, Touch Sensitive & Wave Racer

Paradiso: John Grant with support from John Murry

Paradiso: Kurt Vile & The Violators

Paradiso: Mick Harvey: Intoxicated Man

Paradiso: Modular

Movement, Roland Tings, Wordlife & Softwar

Paradiso: Orquesta Tipica Fernandez Fierro



Paradiso: Georgia Anne Muldrow & Dudley Perkins with DJ Romes

Paradiso: Soil & Pimp Sessions

POP 2014

Boxwars, Ambrose Akinmusire, Bella Kaolo, Ben Caplan & The Casual Smokers, Lee Fields & The Expressions and more

Project 28: Roman Ondak

Samaris

Sinkane

So Frenchy So Chic

Cartell Music

Summer Sounds in the Domain

Chaka Khan

Sun Ra Arkestra

The Calling: a sonic tour of the sacred and the suburb

Information and Cultural Exchange

Tom Thum - Beating the Habit

Tyondai Braxton HIVE + Canyons & Daniel Boyd 100 MILLION NIGHTS

AUSTRALIA DAY

Ferrython

FAMILY

Boxwars

Jazzamatazz

Ali McGregor

Kaput

Strut & Fret and Tom Flanagan

Squaring the Wheel

Jens Altheimer