SIMA Summer Music Festival
Image: Hillary Geddes
Musicians, music venues and he music loving public all around Sydney are rejoicing this month thanks to SIMA’s determination to forge ahead with their Summer Music Festival this year. After two years without live music owing to COVID-19 restrictions, postponements and cancellations the appetitive for live music on all fronts is palpable. Thankfully for everybody SIMA was determined to “bring a little bit of light and hope” to a music scene which has been starved in recent years.
This year the SIMA Summer Music Festival will take place across approximately eight venues all around the city, with many nights hosting a double bill of talent right through until March 3. Speaking to City Hub roughly one week into the festival Artistic Director Zoe Hauptmann said they have felt nothing but “overwhelming gratitude” from everybody involved in the festival, whether that be musicians, technicians, venues or audience members, so far.
“Everyone is just so pleased to be getting out to play music to bring a little bit of light & hope to this time,” explained Hauptmann. “It’s been so hard for artists & venues alike. We could have easily postponed or cancelled, like many other events have, but we were determined to go ahead in a COVIDsafe way.”
Even for Zoe herself the past two years have been extremely difficult. not only has she constantly had to correct course, or even flat out restart plans from scratch, but she has been the person responsible for making the tough phone calls to let artists know their show has been cancelled.
“The last two years I’ve felt like more a gig canceller rather than a gig booker, so that was not nice,” said Hauptmann.
However, now that the outlook is looking slightly more positive for live events Zoe is hopeful that we may be heading into a “golden age of music.” Zoe says this because she and the SIMA team pivoted away from coordinating live shows and instead shifted focus onto commissioning new works.
“We pivoted a bit over the past couple of years & commissioned a bunch of new works, so now we’ve got heaps of amazing stuff banked up” she explained. “Even in this program there’s heaps of things that were supposed to be programmed last year. So some of these acts having been sitting there being rescheduled three or four times & now finally they are happening.”
In regards to what she is most excited to see at this year’s festival Zoe finds it hard to pick because as the curator she is “a little biased” and was able to schedule a lot of her favourite artists. However, she did suggest Sydneysiders check out the following shows.
“One that is going to be really fantastic is the double bill of Hillary Geddes & Nick Garbett. Both of those artists are Freedman Fellowship winners, who unfortunately over the last couple of years haven’t had many chances to perform.
“Definitely the double bill of Ben Lerner of Tessie Overmyer. People might not have heard of these two but they are two of the most exciting, young saxophonists in the country. So if you are into the best young players that are around today then definitely come & check that out.
“One of the shows that I’m really looked forward to is Asteroid Ecosystem at Mary’s Underground on Feb 26-27… And we’re also running an amazing outdoor venue over the weekend of Feb 11-13, which is fantastic. Overall I’m particularly proud of this lineup. It’s really diverse & showcases a lot of the best musicians that we have on offer in Australia.”
