Arts / Entertainment abounds from snow to the sea

LAST year I attended the Perisher Peak Music Festival as fresh snow was beginning to fall. A world-music festival with folk origins, it began with the lengthy name “The Snowy Mountains of Music”, changing last year to a snazzier title.

Curated by veteran Illawarra music personality, Dave De Santi, the “Peak” takes place across 10 indoor venues in Perisher Valley, Smiggin Holes and Guthega Alpine Village and is presented by Perisher Resorts Chamber of Commerce, which joyously bills it as “Australia’s coolest music festival”.

One of its highlights is the “Peak Upload” event, where unsigned performers from around the country, including Canberra, cram into the Man from Snowy River Hotel, 2pm-4.45pm, on Sunday, June 7, to compete for a prize offering professional career assistance.

It’s bigger than “Ben Hur”, but a few items caught my attention: dynamic singer Mahalia Barnes and her band appear late on Sunday night at the Smigs Stage; the Con Artists, percussion, wind, brass, accordion and fiddle players perform all weekend on three different stages and seasoned kids’ performers Ian McColm and Juliet Scrine are performing “Silly Snow Stories” at several venues on the Saturday and Sunday.

A four-day festival pass includes entry to all 10 venues around Perisher and Smiggins, more than 120 performances featuring 35 artists, free Saturday night skiing and unlimited foot passenger chairlift rides.

Perisher Peak Music Festival, June 5-8, bookings to peakfestival.com.au

THE Batemans Bay Writers Festival, also on the long weekend, offers a warmer climate and some serious intellectual activity. There’ll be author talks, poetry sessions, book signings and conversations with Anne Buist, Emma Ashmere, Gabrielle Lord, Graeme Simsion, Hannie Rayson, Harry Laing, Julie Janson, Linda Jaivin, Maggie Mackellar, ACT poet Kathy Kituai and NSW Premier’s award-winner, Canberran Mark Henshaw.

The timely opening event in the Batemans Bay Festival Hub Marquee, at 5.30pm on Friday, June 5, is “Technology Brought to Book”, where e-books face off against bound books in a humorous debate moderated by historian, rare-book fiend and passionate reader Paul Brunton.

The program has sessions ranging from a talk on “Dog Eat Dog”, the story of survival, struggle and triumph from Michael Browning, the man who put AC/DC on the world stage, to a talk about “The Rosie Effect” by Graeme Simsion, whose previous novel was on Bill Gates’ Six Books for Summer Reading list last year.

Program and bookings for platinum passes, weekend tickets, day tickets and individual workshops to batemansbaywritersfestival.com or 0417 267771. Seating for general sessions is on a first-come, first-served basis.

 

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