Enjoy this 50th Anniversary Tour and charity concert with proceeds to Jersey Hospice Care and Prostate UK. Probably the greatest test of an artist’s success is his durability.

One of the highest honours Kenny has achieved was when Prince Charles requested the band to play at his and Diana’s Wedding Ball, attended by 1500, mainly crowned, guests.

For fifty years Kenny Ball has flown the flag for his particular brand of Traditional Jazz all over the world. It is a tribute to his stamina and musical integrity that Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen are as popular today as they were back in 1960 when they had their first Chart Hit with “Samantha”.

From that time on Hit after Hit came pouring out until the final tally was fourteen top thirty records, eclipsing even the great Louis Armstrong; an achievement which has never been equalled by any other Jazz Artist and which included “Midnight in Moscow” a Top Two in both the UK and USA charts.

In 1964, a group of boys from Liverpool changed the face of rock `n' roll. This fall, Broadway audiences get to relive their incredible journey at this multi-media concert tribute with the one band that truly captures the spirit of The Beatles... RAIN.

Together longer than The Beatles themselves, RAIN has mastered every song, gesture and nuance of the legendary foursome, delivering a totally live, note-for-note performance that's as infectious as it is transporting. The Boston Herald calls this spectacular show "A triumph!" and The Denver Post calls it "the next best thing to seeing The Beatles!"

From the early hits to later classics that The Beatles never got the chance to play live, this adoring tribute will take you back to a time when all you needed was love, and a little help from your friends!

Audience: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted in the theatre.

Conductor: René Jacobs
Soprano: Sunhae Im
Mezzo-Soprano: Vivica Genaux
Bass: Marcos Fink

The Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler, known as the Resurrection, was written between 1888 and 1894, and first performed in 1895.

Apart from the Eighth Symphony, this symphony was Mahler's most popular and successful work during his lifetime

Please exchange voucher at the box office at the State Opera on the day of the performance.

NOTE: Performance times can change at short notice, ensure to check up prior to performance.

The Volksoper is Viennas main stage for operetta, opera, musicals and ballet, offering sophisticated musical entertainment. Colourful, eclectic and full of vitality, it is the only theatre dedicated to the genre of operetta.

Operetta belongs to Vienna and Vienna installed it at the home of operetta, Volksopera Vienna, which thereupon became the leading operetta house in the world. First class singers, actors and dancers together with a versatile orchestra cunjure up a musical firework display every evening.

Johann Strauss, Franz Lehr, Emmerich Klmn wrote their world famous beloved melodies for operettas such as The Fledermaus, The Merry Widow and Countess Mariza. A visit to at least one of these operettas at the Volksopera Vienna is a must for every visitor to Vienna!

Please exchange Voucher at the box office at the Volksoper Vienna.

Beethoven/Stravinsky

The French and the Russians have always had a soft spot for each other – in music at least!

These are the composers who give us orchestral colour, sweeping melodies and vibrant exoticism, the composers who temper Germanic convention with brilliance and fantasy. Which all makes for a perfect match when we bring a Russian conductor and a French soloist together to perform vividly imagined music with an Oriental cast.

Let your imagination loose on the tender Adagio and thrilling dances that accompany Spartacus’s uprising. Surrender to the spinning violin solos and rich orchestral palette of Scheherazade’s nightly tales – a spirited heroine in an exotic world. And discover the charming panoramas of Saint-Saëns’ most evocative concerto, with its thudding steamship propellers and croaking frogs on the Nile.

KHACHATURIAN Spartacus: Suite
SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto No.5 (Egyptian)
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade

Alexander Lazarev conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet piano

We’re ushering in the Sydney summer with Mahler’s Third Symphony – his sunniest symphony of all. “The finale is just unbelievably uplifting,” says Ashkenazy, “and no one, not even the most pessimistic person, will be able to resist it.”

But before the music arrives at that glorious conclusion, radiant in its affirmation of love, it traces a musical journey inspired by nature and the dream of a summer morning.
It’s an expansive, all-embracing symphony that finds as much meaning in a dainty meadow flower as in the voices of angels. This, said Mahler, is a symphony that wakes from unfathomable silence and sings and rings!

Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor
Lilli Paasikivi mezzo-soprano
Ladies of the Sydney
Philharmonia Choirs
Sydney Children’s Choir

Venue: Concert Hall
Dates: 2 – 4 Dec

When words fail, music begins. Three musical visions of heaven from the sound of moonlight to Mahler’s wide-eyed unveiling of paradise: “hung with violins.”
Sometimes words fail, and that’s where this concert begins, with instrumental moments from Strauss’s musical “conversation piece”, Capriccio – a prelude for just six players and a glimpse of moonlight in a delicate intermezzo. The heavenly image is sustained in the clarinet concerto, with the mellow purity of the instrument that Mozart taught to sing.

We’d guess that Mahler’s Fourth Symphony is the ‘first’ Mahler symphony for many music-lovers – it’s the shortest and the most candid, and you can’t help but be won over by its singing optimism and dancing innocence. Even the “dance of death” for a devilish violin doesn’t spoil its beauty. Then in its charming finale, soprano Emma Matthews unveils a child’s vision of heaven – “hung with violins!”

R STRAUSS Capriccio: Prelude and
Moonlight Music
MOZART Clarinet Concerto
MAHLER Symphony No.4

Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor
Dimitri Ashkenazy clarinet
Emma Matthews soprano

Venue: Concert Hall
Dates: 24 – 27 Nov

Gershwin and Friends

Enter the jazz age – the Paris of Josephine Baker and Picasso, the New York of Dorothy Parker and Irving Berlin, the smooth sound of the clarinet, the smoky trumpet.
Mix it all up with folk mythology, authentic jazz, and real Parisian taxi horns and you get the heady impression of music at its most vital.

The 1920s were an amazing era of cross-fertilisation and mutual inspiration: as Gershwin was putting the concert hall into jazz with his Rhapsody in Blue, Darius Milhaud on the other side of the Atlantic was capturing the chaos and steamy vitality of Harlem for the ballet theatre. Where did the bold experiments take us? Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein and John Adams complete the itinerary: New York, Paris, and the world!

ADAMS The Chairman Dances – Foxtrot for orchestra
MILHAUD The Creation of the World
GERSHWIN An American in Paris
BERNSTEIN Prelude, Fugue and Riffs
GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue
ELLINGTON Harlem

Kristjan Järvi conductor
Michael Kieran Harvey piano
Francesco Celata clarinet

Venue: Concert Hall
Dates: 8 – 9 Oct