Brisbane Music Festival | 2025
November 14 – 30 , FourthWall Arts, Brisbane, QLD
When you speak with festival director Alex Raineri, you quickly sense that the Brisbane Music Festival isn’t just a curated program of concerts, it’s an evolving conversation. A creative playground. A provocation. And, occasionally, a place where a sandwich becomes an instrument.
Now in its eighth year, the Brisbane Music Festival has quietly become one of Australia’s most interesting contemporary music offerings. There’s no strict theme to the 2025 program, and that’s exactly the point. “We’re not following a linear thread,” says Raineri, “but rather embodying the festival’s ethos of platforming work that has limited voice elsewhere in Australia.”
And what a voice it has… The 2025 season features a vibrant roll call of Australian artists including Sophie Rowell, Jeremy Kleeman, Rebecca Cassidy, Ways by Ways, Emma Di Marco, Solstice Guitar Duo, and experimental newcomers Helcarax. Actor Bethany Simons, dancer Katina Olsen, and visual artist Eljo Agenbach also appear, along with two 2025 young artists, Neve Randall and Joshua Jones, both premiering new original works. Not to mention a suite of new commissions from the likes of William Barton, Samantha Wolf, Mary Bellamy, Lisa Cheney, Jack Bochow, Finn Idris, and Raineri himself.
BMF has always leaned into the now, but there’s a growing sense that it’s not just about the present, it’s about imagining futures. “As an artistic director,” Raineri reflects, “it’s an exciting responsibility to interrogate how music can exist beyond the sphere of its own abstract merits and question how it can speak to contemporary culture more broadly. Curation is a powerful medium in which our artform can comment impactfully on the world we inhabit and speak to a utopia in which we wish to live.”
That idea, of sound as utopian gesture, pulses throughout the program. But don’t mistake idealism for predictability. BMF 2025 is full of gloriously kooky curveballs. There’s William Barton’s first solo piano work. A 4.5-hour Morton Feldman piece (yes, you read correctly – four-and-a-half hours) performed live by Ways by Ways. Bethany Simons will embody every character in a story-theatre reimagining of The Marriage of Figaro. Samantha Wolf’s new work explores altered states of consciousness across history. And Raineri, never one to shy away from spectacle, will perform a solo piano version of Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club in a new arrangement by James Dobinson – requested to be “as campy-virtuoso as possible.” Also: one sandwich, used musically. You’ve been warned.
New this year is BMF’s first film screening, with two major projects pivoting into the digital space a sign that the festival continues to stretch its own definitions of what a performance can be. But despite the ambitious scope, it’s still grounded in intimate experience. The entire festival will take place at FourthWall Arts, a black-box theatre tucked in Brisbane’s buzzing CBD. “It’s become a home for curious listeners and bold music-making,” Raineri says.
Crucially, access remains front and centre. General admission is just $30 and that includes a complimentary glass of wine. Several events are free, ensuring that cost is never a barrier to entry. In a cultural landscape where ticket prices can climb quickly, this is more than a nice touch, it’s a statement of intent.
Ultimately, BMF 2025 doesn’t aim to soothe or explain. It invites. It nudges. It opens doors you didn’t know were there. If you’re in Brissie in November 2025, follow the sound. It might just lead you to a sonic utopia – or at the very least, a sandwich that sings.
More at: www.brismusicfestival.com
