Four Winds Spring Youth Music Festival will return in November 2025. Photo: David Rogers Photography.
The 2025 Four Winds program was revealed at the beautiful Four Winds site in Barragga Bay on Sunday (15 December). It features diverse and exceptional music experiences ranging from intimate performances to larger classical concerts and community festivals.
It reflects what Four Winds executive director Leigh Small has learnt since she took the reins in June 2023, tasked with setting the new strategic direction for Four Winds.
Last year she paused the Four Winds Festival at Easter while she studied data and consulted broadly.
“The priority for Four Winds in 2024 has been to be loved locally, enabling our community to more regularly attend concerts by some of Australia’s finest musicians,” she said.
Community partnerships last year included Sculpture Bermagui, Murrah Hall, and the Yuin Folk Club which runs the Cobargo Folk Festival.
Ms Small also trialled a new approach to programming.
“One of the elements that has been a great success is a curatorial artistic team instead of a single artistic director,” she said.
The team, comprising Dr Louise Morris, David Hewett, and Cheryl Davison of Four Winds, plus Timothy Walker and renowned pianist Andrea Lam, brings together diverse backgrounds, connections, and networks. New York-based jazz vocalist and composer Sophie Brous, who has a background in programming internationally, brought a new influence to the 2025 program.
Bega Valley Male Voice Choir, performing as part of Spring Sing and the Youth Music Festival. Photo: David Rogers Photography.
The trial resulted in a much broader range of musical genres, a change that has been overwhelmingly successful.
Ms Small said around a third of the year’s audience had never been to Four Winds before.
Four Winds’ established audience of classical music lovers have embraced the change, proving to be open to music types such as experimental jazz and rap.
“They are trusting in the programming of Four Winds which reflects the calibre of the classical performances programmed in 2024,” Ms Small said. “The calibre is exactly what would be shown at a Four Winds Festival.”
Over the Easter weekend, 18-20 April, Ms Lam will perform with some of Australia’s finest classical artists in a series of five concerts.
They will perform pieces by Haydn, Schumann, Bach, Brahms, Messiaen, and more, that will take the audience on a journey through profound human experiences including love, passion, celebration, transcendence, and hardship.
Classical music lovers will also revel in Affinity Quartet’s Incantation performance on 2 November. Globally recognised for exceptional music-making, the quartet will play French composer Heloise Werner’s Incantation in Four Parts, as well as a composition by one of Australia’s finest violinists Justin Williams.
Affinity Quartet is one of Four Winds’ artist residencies in 2025. The residencies support emerging and established musicians to focus on creating new work for a concentrated period without distraction.
Affinity Quartet will perform at Four Winds in November 2025, as well as have an artist residency there next year. Photo: David Rogers Photography.
The other artist residencies are Acacia Quartet, one of Australia’s most respected string ensembles, Red Dirt Hymns with the Luminescence Chamber Singers, and Van Diemen’s Fiddles.
Four Winds Spring Youth Festival will be back on 23 November, celebrating the deep connections between young people, their mentors, and place.
Four Winds will also introduce Barragga Yangga Festival over 20-21 September. Meaning ‘many songs’ in Dhurga language, the festival is a vibrant celebration of music, culture and community that brings together First Nations artists to share language through song.
The festival is curated by Four Winds First Nations creative director Ms Davison and showcases new material performed by the multigenerational Djinama Yilaga Choir that she founded, and Butchulla songman Fred Leone, among others. The work has been arranged by conductor Roland Peelman and Candelo musician Heath Cullen.
Other highlights of 2025 will be performances by revered music trailblazers and cult band The Necks on 9 February and contemporary folk artist Lior on 1 June.
Australia’s finest guitar duo, the Grigoryan Brothers, will perform new arrangements as part of their Amistad album tour on 28 March. They will push beyond classical music to explore jazz, folk and contemporary music genres.
Four Winds’ flexipass of 10 or 20 discounted tickets helps make the musical experiences accessible to more people. Performances are free to those under the age of 16.
“The 2025 program is chosen with the broad tastes of our highly engaged Sapphire Coast community in mind,” Ms Small said. “Thank you for trusting us to present music in nature again this year.”
For more information, check out the Four Winds website.
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