Sydney Festival 2016

Overview

A FREE concert by The Flaming Lips, a cardboard city with a FREE flying fox, a Birdman screening live scored by the film's drummer Antonio Sanchez, and a steamy story session with Sydney’s sexiest senior citizens are all happening in Sydney this January, when the Sydney Festival turns forty.

Yep, as of 2016, the city’s biggest and best-loved arts shindig will be over the hill. And, by way of celebration, we’re being treated to a program of truly epic proportions. The organisers have spilled the beans on the 157 events (including 89 free ones!), 383 performances, 34 venues, 902 artists and 22 nations that will be coming together from January 7 to 26.

Let’s start with The Flaming Lips. Oklahoma’s most famous psychedelic alternative rock outfit will be hitting The Domain to headline the festival’s legendary Summer Sounds concert, hopefully with clothes and without Miley Cyrus, and definitely pumping out their cult tunes alongside their chart triumphs. And it'll cost you zero dollars.

Meanwhile, SydFest is expanding to a bunch of new spots, including Barangaroo Reserve and Vaucluse House. Barangaroo’s new cultural space, The Cutaway, is gearing up to host one of the festival’s biggest free events for the people. French artist Olivier Grossetête is inviting you to help build The Ephemeral City, an enormous, temporary urban development made of cardboard. Afterwards, you’ll be able to get a damn good view of your work, thanks to free flying fox rides on a mammoth 165 metre zip line.

A strong sense of community spirit also informs the theatrical elements of the festival’s programming. Bursting onto new storytelling territory is a show titled All the Sex I’ve Ever Had, which sees a slew of Sydneysiders aged over 65 bring their experience and insight to personal stories of romance and sex. Then there’s The Object Lesson, an installation/performance inviting you to join illusionist Geoff Sobelle on a journey through an absolutely enormous pile of objects. You'll contemplate every "thing that ever passed through your hands — a massive, meaningful, meaningless pile of junk that describes in debris your tiny human history".

On the music front, we’re excited about Cut the Sky, a powerful indigenous performance work meditating on a dystopian future and featuring songs by Nick Cave and Ngaiire. As we mentioned, quadruple Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer Antonio Sanchez will be improvising a live score to a screening of Birdman (he improvised the actual score, so this will be the first and only time this SydFest score is played). And, for the first time ever, FBi is presenting its SMAC Awards as a huge festival, open to the general public. Other gigs on the schedule include the inimitable Joanna Newsom at the Sydney Opera House launching new album Divers, underground rock trio The Dirty Three and Mexrissey — a Mariachi-style revamping of songs by Morissey and The Smiths. There's also a new folk series happening amongst the gorgeous acoustics of St Stephens Uniting Church.

As usual, Hyde Park's Meriton Festival Village is delivering a whizz-bang array of music, comedy, cabaret and circus acts, while About an Hour is heading back to Carriageworks for another season of 60-minute, $35 events featuring theatre, dance, music and storytelling. Clear your calendar, this is going to be a busy summer.

Dive into the entire Sydney Festival program at the festival website.

Image: Todd Spoth.