Music, She Wrote
23 – 25 September 2022
Malvern Banquet Hall
(entrance via side of Malvern Town Hall)
In-venue and digital tickets on sale now!

In-venue tickets: Festival Pass $80 | Full $35 | Concession & 3MBS Subscribers $30
Digital tickets: Digital Festival Pass $60 | Single Digital Ticket $25

Following two highly acclaimed festivals in 2021 and 2022, Music, She Wrote arrives at the Malvern Banquet Hall this September. Joining the festival’s April 2022 line-up of Melbourne’s most imaginative and engaging classical, baroque and folk musicians is Evergreen Ensemble, presenting world premieres by sought-after Australian composer, Alice Chance.

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Concert 1: RESTORE
Friday 23 September: 7pm – 9pm (AEST)
The first concert rediscovers things we’ve lost over the last two and a half years – the vibrant energy of life’s bubbling rhythm, and voices raised together in song. Firecracker flautist Eliza Shephard (pictured) doesn’t beat around the bush in smashing stereotypes of women composers’ music. There’s not a whiff of quiet domestic wallflower in her solo set, called Bring the Beat Back, filled with driving rhythms and wild exuberance.

Following Eliza is the sublime Consort of Melbourne, who will set the Malvern Banquet Hall ringing with their six-piece a cappella line-up. Their concert celebrates the music written by women against all odds: from some of the first published female composers to Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Schumann (who sacrificed their own careers for their families), to contemporary Australian and British composers.

Concert 2: RENEW
Saturday 24 September: 7pm – 9pm (AEST)
Evergreen Ensemble bridges the gap between baroque and folk music and reinvents it along the way. Featuring period instruments, Celtic harp and voice, the ensemble presents world premieres by celebrated young Australian composer, Alice Chance in a set of newly composed sonatas for baroque instruments alongside traditional Scottish and Scandinavian folk tunes.

Known for their genius harmonies, toe-tapping tunes and imaginative arrangements, Big Fiddle Little Fiddle’s program is a small offering to their ‘female and gender-non-conforming loved ones and friends who constantly renew and replenish with their relentless persistence and optimism.’. The folk duo’s performance will leave you with a sense that, perhaps our world is a little brighter than how it might have seemed before.

Concert 3: REBEL
Sunday 25 September: 2pm – 4pm (AEST)

Long thought of as the weaker, gentler sex, society has always condemned women who rebel. Now, we see a wave of women who refuse to smile and accept their lot – Grace Tame, Rosy Batty, Brittany Higgins, among so many others. This concert celebrates rebellion in all its forms – internal, external, peaceful or not. Artistic director Katie Yap has assembled a festival string quartet that brings together Kyla Matsuura-Miller and Emma Hunt (violins), Katie Yap (viola), and Elina Faskhi (cello). Beginning with one of America’s first published black female composers, Florence Price, they take on works by trailblazing Australian composers Elena Kats-Chernin, Hilary Kleinig and Emily Sheppard, finishing with the furiously triumphant fourth string quartet of Grażyna Bacewicz.

Music, She Wrote is proudly supported by City of Stonnington

Image of Eliza Shephard by Mark Lobo