Megalong Music Festival | Folk and Fancy

5 April 2026, Megalong Valley, NSW

Guest Artists
Asmira Woodward-Page – violin (Artistic Director)
Jacqui Cronin – viola
Timothy Nankervis – cello
Frank Celata – clarinet
Ieva Jokubaviciute – piano

Fellows (2026)
Ellen Choung – violin
Maggie Zeng – violin
Daniel Casey – viola
Arjun Singh – cello
Reuben Johnson – piano
Jeremy Spikman – cello
Leon Spikman – double bass 

Nestled deep in the Blue Mountains, the Megalong Valley feels like a place slightly removed from time. The road winds down through fern gullies and sandstone escarpments before opening suddenly onto wide green paddocks beneath towering red cliffs. It is an expansive, quiet landscape, and at its centre sits a modest community hall that, for a few days over Easter, becomes a world stage.

The tagline for the Megalong Music Festival is “Chamber Music with a View”, and it is no marketing exaggeration. The simple besser block hall sits quietly among the trees, its clean acoustic and intimate size creating exactly the kind of space chamber music was written for: up close and conversational.

But the real story of this festival lies not only in the place, but in the people and the purpose behind it. Under the direction of violinist Asmira Woodward-Page, the festival brings together emerging Australian musicians and established professionals (including guest artists from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and internationally based performers) for a week of intensive rehearsal, mentoring and collaboration, culminating in performances like Folk and Fancy. With no government funding, the festival relies on donors, sponsors and patrons, it’s a shame because this is exactly the kind of musical initiative that deserves wider support – and too often, Australian musicians feel they must go overseas for these kinds of opportunities.

The results were clear. The young fellows did not play like students. They played like colleagues. Throughout the afternoon there was a noticeable sense of ensemble awareness, musical maturity and confidence, the kind that comes from being treated as professionals and being mentored by some of the best musicians in the country. There was also quite a lot of joy!

The program itself was cleverly curated around the idea of how folk traditions become art music. From Armenia to Peru, Korea to Spain, America to Eastern Europe, each work drew on folk traditions, dances, songs and stories, transforming them into chamber music.

Aram Khachaturian’s Trio opened the program with its unmistakable Caucasus rhythms and clarinet lines that seemed to sing like a human voice, before moving through restless dances and hypnotic folk melodies. Rossini’s duet for cello and double bass, performed from memory by brothers Jeremy and Leon Spikman, was full of charm and connection. In Paul Wiancko’s American Haiku Jacqui Cronin and Tim Nankervis explored sound in entirely different ways, with percussive cello effects and fiddle-inspired writing, while Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas brought the sound world of Andean village music vividly to life through the string quartet.

At the centre of the program sat Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, performed by Woodward-Page, SSO Principal Clarinet Frank Celata and Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute — the “fancy” in a program otherwise grounded in folk traditions. In this Faustian tale, the violin becomes the soldier, the clarinet the sly and seductive devil, and the piano the thread that binds the story together. It is an awkward, angular, brilliant piece and the trio performed it with both precision and obvious enjoyment.

The second half returned to the folk theme more explicitly. Ljova’s Budget Bulgar had the players walking in while playing, like a roaming folk band, full of Balkan rhythms and klezmer energy. Jungyoon Wie’s Songs of My Grandmother drew on Korean work songs, with instruments plucked and strummed in unusual ways, while Joaquín Turina’s Escena Andaluza blended Spanish passion with French Impressionist colour. The concert concluded with Dohnányi’s Piano Quintet No. 1, a lush, dramatic work written when the composer was just 17, its Hungarian dance rhythms bringing the program to a triumphant close.

The emerging artist fellows were woven into trios, quartets and larger ensembles, anchored and mentored by the guest artists, and their assured, mature playing made it clear that these are young musicians already destined for big stages.

Between sets, the audience spilled outside for lunch, where local producers from Megalong 101 served generous and delicious tasting plates, and volunteers poured glasses of wine. It was, in every sense, community-supported music making: local food, local volunteers, international-standard musicians and an audience willing to travel for something very special.

It is easy to talk about supporting young artists, but festivals like Megalong show what that support actually looks like: time, mentoring, performance opportunities and audiences who are willing to make the trip and sit a few metres from the future of Australian music. These programs do not run on ticket sales alone, they run on community support. If you care about the future of chamber music in this country, this (and other festivals like it) is something worth supporting.

Photo credits: Pepe Newton, Imogen Mabin