Welcome to the Deep Dive. If you are watching
our video feed right now, you can already see
that our backdrop has completely transformed.
It looks incredible. Yeah, it's really matched
to the sheer scale of what we are covering today.
We've got this beautiful, bustling Brisbane cityscape,
but it's dramatically overlapping with this vast...
almost endless, starry Australian outback. And
weaving through all of it, visually tying the
high rises of the city to the red dirt of the
desert, are these floating sheets of music. It's
quite the visual. It really is. And it perfectly
sets the stage for an exploration of, well, a
truly incredible cultural phenomenon. Oh, absolutely.
Today, we are unpacking a stack of sources detailing
the Queensland Music Festival. Or QMF, as we'll
probably call it. Right, QMF. This is a uniquely
massive Australian musical event, and our mission
today is to figure out exactly how it achieved
such an unprecedented scale. Because it didn't
start that way. No, not at all. We want to know
how something starts as a highly concentrated,
very traditional city -centric biennial and somehow
evolves into this sprawling statewide cultural
juggernaut that just refuses to be confined by
geography. It's a massive shift. So whether you
are a dedicated arts enthusiast, someone who
geeks out over truly mind -boggling logistical
feats, or you're just insanely curious about
how live music actually reaches some of the most
remote, isolated corners of the globe this deep
dive is for you. For sure. Okay, let's unpack
this. It really is a master class in challenging
the boundaries of what an arts organization can
be. When you dive into the source material, the
most striking realization is that a festival
of this magnitude does not just happen by accident.
Right, it's not spontaneous. No, it requires
a sequence of highly intentional, deeply visionary
choices. And that's coupled with a willingness
to completely dismantle the original, comfortable
blueprint that most arts festivals rely on. And
to really grasp the scale of the demolition,
we have to look at that original blueprint. Yeah.
Because the origins of this festival were, frankly,
incredibly conventional. Very safe. Yeah, safe.
So let's rewind to the 1990s. The festival didn't
actually start out as the massive, boundary -pushing
Queensland music festival we know today. Right.
Back in 1991, it was born simply as the Brisbane
Biennial Festival of Music. Which firmly anchors
it to the capital city. Completely. It was operating
on that very standard, recognizable festival
model. You know, you bring international and
national talent into the major metropolitan hub.
You utilize the existing high quality infrastructure,
the concert halls, the theaters, the established
ticketing networks, and you expect the audience
to come to you. Right. They had to travel to
the art. And they had some serious heavyweights
steering that ship in those early days. Oh, yeah.
Some massive names. The founding artistic director
was Anthony Steele, who directed the inaugural
1991 festival and then returned for the 1993
edition. A very steady hand to start. Exactly.
Then as we move into 1995 and 1997, you have
Nicholas Hayward stepping in as CEO. Working
alongside Jonathan Mills and Richard Mills as
artistic advisors. Yes. And these aren't just
random names. These are major figures in the
Australian arts scene. Oh, absolutely. So throughout
the 1990s, they are successfully building this
solid, critically acclaimed reputation, but they
are doing it entirely within the safe confines
of the Brisbane city limits. And that phase is
crucial. You really can't bypass that step. Really?
Why not? Because an organization needs to build
that initial bedrock of artistic credibility
and financial stability before it can afford
to take massive risks. Well, that makes sense.
You have to prove you can walk before you try
to spread across the outback. Exactly. But the
true turning point, the moment where this organization
looks at its own success and decides to completely
rewrite the rules of engagement, that happens
right at the end of the decade. Right. 1999.
This is the year the sources highlight as the
major pivot. A huge year. We see a complete shake
-up in the leadership structure. Claire Booth
is appointed as the executive director, and Simone
de Haan steps into the role of artistic director.
And the very first bold move they make is changing
the name. Yes, it officially becomes the Queensland
Biennial Festival of Music. What's fascinating
here is that altering the name wasn't just some
superficial rebranding exercise to sell more
tickets. It represented a fundamental philosophical
shift in the organization's mandate. How so?
Well, the 1999 program was explicitly extended
to include regional Queensland. They deliberately
took the focus away from just the capital city
and declared that this festival belongs to the
entire state. Wow. Now, if you know anything
about the geography of Queensland, you know how
incredibly audacious that is. Audacious is putting
it mildly. I actually have to push back a little
here because from a purely logistical and financial
standpoint, this sounds like an absolute nightmare.
It really does. I mean, Brisbane in the late
90s was really coming into... its own culturally.
They had a captive, concentrated audience, proven
venues, and guaranteed box office returns. Very
safe bets. Right. So why on earth would you risk
all of that momentum to pack up lighting rigs,
sound systems, and international artists and
ship them out across thousands of kilometers
of remote outback? Because if you only ever cater
to the capital city, you are fundamentally limiting
the cultural life of the state. I guess that's
true. You are totally right, though. It is a
massive financial and logistical risk. You are
abandoning the easy ticket sales of a concentrated
urban population. But the new leadership recognized
that a Queensland festival shouldn't just be
a Brisbane festival in disguise. I love that
phrasing. Yeah, they wanted to build a decentralized
model meant to reach far -flung communities that
usually get entirely bypassed by major cultural
events. And what's wild to me is that they didn't
just make this terrifying leap into the regions.
and settle into a new routine. No, they didn't
coast at all. They kept throwing curveballs.
Let's look at the leadership carousel that followed,
because the sources lay out a succession of artistic
directors that completely defies how these massive
arts organizations usually operate. It's so unusual.
Right. Instead of finding one successful director
and locking them in for a decade of stability,
they brought in a rotating cast of visionaries.
It is a brilliant structural decision. By design,
they ensured the festival's identity would never
stagnate. Let's track how that stylistic whiplash
actually played out, because it's fascinating
to see how the festival morphed under different
artistic backgrounds. Yeah, let's go through
them. After Simone de Han's pivotal 1999 festival,
Lyndon Teresini takes the reins from 2001 through
2005. Now, Teresini comes from a deep background
in opera and large -scale performing arts. So
suddenly you have this incredible sense of grand
theatrical scale being exported to the regions.
Exactly. You go from establishing the regional
footprint to suddenly injecting it with grand
operatic ambition. And then the pendulum swings
again. Right, because in 2007, Paul Grabowski
steps up. Grabowski is a legendary jazz musician
and composer, and 2000 is another major milestone
year, according to the sources, because Grabowski
oversees the final evolution of the festival's
name. They drop the biennial part. Yes. They
officially drop the word biennial, and it becomes
simply the Queensland Music Festival. trimming
that word down does a couple of things it makes
the branding punchier of course but it also reflects
how ingrained the event was becoming in the cultural
calendar it was becoming an institution exactly
and didn't need the formal biennial tag anymore
it was an established institution even as it
constantly shifted its musical focus and the
rotation just keeps going yeah Deborah Conway
takes over as artistic director for the 2009
and 2011 festivals. Bringing a completely different
vibe. Oh, totally. She brings a gritty, contemporary
indie pop and singer -songwriter sensibility.
Then James Morrison steps in for 2013 and 2015.
And with his background, you suddenly have this
massive focus on jazz and community engagement.
Right, getting massive brass bands together in
remote towns. And after that, Katie Noonan is
appointed in 2016. directing the 2017 and 2019
festivals, bringing her virtuosic, vocal, and
highly collaborative classical meets contemporary
edge. When you lay it out like that, you really
see the genius of the model. It's kind of staggering.
Every one of those directors brings a completely
different network of international artists, a
different musical philosophy, and a different
way of engaging with local communities. So it's
never the same festival twice? Never. For the
audiences across Queensland, The festival is
a constantly moving target. It forces the festival
to reinvent itself every two years. But again,
I have to play devil's advocate here. Go for
it. If you have a brand new director with a totally
different musical agenda every couple years,
doesn't the festival risk becoming disjointed?
How do you maintain a loyal audience when the
vibe constantly shifts from grand opera to indie
rock? to big band jazz. That is the exact risk
they were willing to take, and it paid off because
the variety became the brand. Oh, I see. The
audience doesn't buy a ticket expecting a specific
genre. They engage with the festival expecting
to be surprised. The constant reinvention is
exactly what fueled their growth rather than
hindering it. And speaking of growth, that brings
us to the sheer jaw -dropping scale of what QMF
became by the time Katie Noonan directed the
2019 festival. The numbers are wild. The sources
give us an astonishing metric here. By 2019,
QMF had grown from that original, traditional
biennial event into a creator of annual festivals
and events, producing, and this is not a typo,
over 800 live music experiences in that single
festival year. Over 800 live music experiences.
I really want us to pause and think about the
sheer weight of that logistic sheet. It's honestly
hard to fathom. That requires an absolute army
of sound engineers, stage managers, local coordinators
and artists, all operating across a geographic
footprint that is roughly two and a half times
the size of Texas. That puts it into perspective.
And it's so massive that the source material
highlights a pretty bold claim. The text states
that by its geography, length, participation,
and attendance, the Queensland Music Festival
is the largest live music festival in the world.
Wow. Now, I do have to point out a brilliant
little quirk in our Wikipedia source here, which
gave me a good laugh. Right after that massive
claim, largest live music festival in the world,
there is a classic Wikipedia bracket saying,
citation needed, right next to it. Yeah. I love
that. the wikipedia editors remain ever skeptical
but honestly even with the citation needed tag
the sheer volume of 800 events across that kind
of vast punishing terrain makes it a statistical
behemoth whether it holds the exact verifiable
global title or not the scale is undeniable absolutely
but a footprint that large brings up a very practical
inescapable reality let me guess how on earth
Do you pay to move 800 events across the desert?
Exactly. You cannot pull off an event of this
geographical size with just box office sales
and a few corporate sponsors. It's financially
impossible. The who pays for it. Right. Well,
the sources outline exactly who is footing the
bill for this colossal undertaking. And it reveals
a lot about how deeply embedded this festival
became in the public interest. It had huge backing.
It's heavily supported by the Queensland government,
specifically through Arts Queensland. But it
doesn't stop there. No, they had partners everywhere.
The Brisbane City Council is a major backer,
as is the Federal Australia Council, alongside
a really wide range of other partners. Which
tells us everything we need to know about the
secret to sustaining massive community arts initiatives.
Which is? It requires multi -tiered government
support. You have the state level, the local
level, and the federal level all bought in. That
alignment is incredibly rare. I imagine it's
tough to get everyone on the same page. Securing
funding from one tier of government is hard enough.
Securing it from all three shows that the festival
successfully proved its immense value. They convinced
all these different stakeholders that bringing
high -end music to the absolute margins of the
map was worth the heavy investment. Here's where
it gets really interesting. Because when we talk
about the margins of the map, we aren't just
speaking metaphorically. Right. We mean literal
remote locations. The sources give us some incredible,
vivid glimpses into exactly what these remote
performances look like. For instance, the text
highlights that in 2005, the festival featured
performances by the Huli Wigmen. Which is an
extraordinary cultural exchange to facilitate.
It really is. And for those who might not be
familiar, the Huli Wigmen are this renowned,
iconic indigenous people from the Gila province
of Papua New Guinea. Truly fascinating culture.
They are famous for their incredibly elaborate,
beautifully ornamented wigs made from human hair,
their vibrant face paint, and their powerful
traditional chants. The visual and sonic impact
of their performance is just staggering. And
QMF brought them in to perform. The sources also
note events being staged in places like Cooktown.
Way up north. Right, which is way up in far north
Queensland. Historically incredibly isolated.
They also talk about performances taking place
in Jimbor, known for its massive heritage -listed
sandstone house and spalling plains. We're talking
about taking... heavily produced world -class
music far, far away from the usual stadium circuits
and dropping it into these deeply historic regional
landscapes. What stands out to you about that?
Well, when you picture a major international
arts festival, your mind almost defaults to a
metropolitan grid. You picture fighting for parking.
high -rise luxury hotels, and packed concrete
arenas. Yeah, that's the standard experience.
But taking a festival of this caliber, bringing
international acts like the Hooliwigmen to places
like Cooktown or Ajdor, completely shatters that
mold. It actively breaks the monopoly that major
cities usually hold on live music experiences.
It really challenges the idea of who gets to
experience high art, doesn't it? Exactly. It's
a profound social equalizer. The underlying philosophy
here is vital. Why should someone living in a
regional or rural area be starved of top -tier
cultural events simply because of their zip code?
We shouldn't be. Right. By bringing the festival
to them, QMF essentially decided that geography
should not dictate your access to the arts. It's
a beautiful way to frame it. And the sources
show that they didn't just passively bring art
to these regions. They actively created art about
these regions. Oh, this is such a great part
of the story. This brings us to my absolute favorite
anecdote from the stack of materials we have
today. In 2019, during Katie Noonan's tenure,
the festival commissioned a very specific, highly
unusual musical piece. Very unusual. It wasn't
just a generic symphony or a crowd -pleasing
pop anthem. It was a piece commissioned specifically
to commemorate the rediscovery of a bird that
was once thought to be completely extinct, the
night parrot. The night parrot is such a legendary
piece of Australian ecological lore. It really
is a ghost story. For context, the night parrot
is this incredibly elusive, nocturnal, ground
-dwelling bird that makes its home in the remote
outback. For roughly a century, it was basically
a myth. People thought it was entirely gone forever.
Then miraculously, it is rediscovered, and the
Queensland Music Festival decides this is what
they need to write a piece of music about. Which
is such a uniquely Queensland story to tell.
Isn't it? And they didn't just play the music
in a vacuum and move on. The sources explicitly
note... that a recording of the night parrot
was actually immortalized through this music
festival commission. That's amazing. The piece
and the story behind it were even broadcast in
a radio interview on RN Breakfast with Fran Kelly
back in July 2019. They took this incredibly
niche, fascinating moment of local ecology, this
triumphant return of a ghost bird, and they elevated
it into a massive cultural celebration. If we
connect this to the bigger picture, the Night
Parrot Commission perfectly encapsulates exactly
what QMF evolved into over those decades. How
so? It proves that this organization became far
more than just a music festival. It wasn't just
about setting up a temporary stage in the dirt,
playing some hits and leaving. Right. It wasn't
a hit and run operation. No. It became a powerful
vehicle for immortalizing local ecology, recording
regional history and celebrating the unique,
sometimes bizarre identity of Queensland itself
through art. They took a rediscovered bird, a
literal symbol of outback resilience and hidden
wonders, and wove its actual call into the cultural
fabric of the state. Exactly. That is how you
create a lasting legacy. You don't just import
art from the cities and dump it in the regions.
You reflect the local environment back to the
people who live there, proving that their stories,
their landscapes, and their wildlife are worthy
of high art commissions. So what does this all
mean? Let's summarize it. If we look at the entire
journey we've unpacked today, the story of the
Queensland Music Festival is ultimately a masterclass
in breaking boundaries and refusing to settle.
It started in 1991 as a very traditional, very
safe, Brisbane -bound biennial festival. But
by 1999, they dared to look outward, risking
their comfortable urban success to embrace the
regions. And it paid off. Big time. And over
the next two decades, powered by a constantly
rotating cast of brilliant, stylistically diverse
artistic directors, it grew into an absolute
behemoth. It's a testament to the power of continuous
reinvention. It really is. By 2019, they were
pulling off over 800 live events in a single
cycle. They stretched a massive geographical
canvas, figuring out the funding and the logistics
to bring high art and incredible international
acts like the Hooliwigmen to remote historic
outposts like Cooktown and Jimboor. Unbelievable
logistics. And perhaps most beautifully, they
used their massive platform to immortalize the
state's lost and found wildlife, turning the
elusive call of the night parrot into a permanent
piece of shared cultural heritage. It reinforces
an incredibly powerful lesson. True cultural
enrichment happens when barriers to access are
not just managed but actively dismantled. That's
a great point. In a territory as massive and
unforgiving as Queensland, vast geography is
almost always seen as an obstacle. It is the
built -in excuse for not doing something. QMF
chose to treat that vast geography as a canvas
instead. It really did. They proved that with
the right mix of fearless, rotating visionary
leadership and incredibly complex multi -tiered
funding, you can actually deliver. world -class,
life -enriching experiences straight to the doorstep
of the most isolated communities. Which leaves
us with a pretty incredible, provocative thought
to chew on long after we wrap up today. I love
these. We've seen exactly how this decentralized
rotating model works to invigorate the arts.
If a music festival can successfully scale to
cover one of the most vast and challenging geographical
landscapes on Earth, and if it can constantly
rotate its leadership every two years to ensure
it stays fresh, adaptable, and innovative what
other highly centralized systems could learn
from this it's a fascinating proposition think
about it could critical heavily centralized systems
like education or health care benefit from adopting
this sprawling decentralized ever -changing festival
model imagine that what if we stopped forcing
everyone in isolated communities to travel to
the metropolitan grid for the best services and
instead built a logistical model that brings
the absolute best of what we have out to the
margins It makes you wonder what else is possible
when we treat vast distances as a canvas rather
than an excuse. It really does. Well, thank you
so much for joining us on this deep dive into
the source material. We loved unpacking the massive
logistical and artistic puzzle of this festival
with you, and we will catch you on the next one.
Until next time.