Taranta Festival
For Taranta Festival co-ordinators, this year’s program is shaped by the theme of Identity. Artists have been invited to explore what makes people who they are, where they come from, where they end up, and how those elements coexist. It is a fitting theme for the festival’s fourth year in Bellingen, as the community continues to discover what it is creating together.
Taranta Festival is more than an event. It is an annual art project brought to life through the work, ideas and imagination of an entire community. Its production process, and the weekend itself, may look different from other festivals, but each year it delves more deeply into the values, connections and identities that shape the region.
This year’s guests come from further afield than ever. Ars Nova Napoli will bring Neapolitan folk music to Australia for the first time, while Alessandro Santacaterina reimagines the ancient chitarra battente with loops and electronics. Ginkgobiloba, featuring Bellingen’s own Memo Beltzer, and Diego Jaskalevich on charango will bring traditional Argentine rhythms. Transatlantico, Wombatuque, and Farhan Shah and SUFI OZ will add Colombian, Brazilian and Sufi traditions to the program.
Bellingen’s virtuosic youth chamber orchestra, Sinfonia, is preparing arrangements of songs by visiting artists for a feature concert, with more surprises still being organised.
Opening night will feature a concert years in the making. Salvatore, the festival’s Artistic Director, formed the Santa Taranta Orchestra with some of Australia’s finest folk musicians, intending to launch it in Melbourne in 2020. When the pandemic closed the borders that weekend, international artists were stranded in Australia, with musicians assembled but no audience. Salvatore closed the doors, and a long, often remote recording project began.
This year, the resulting album will finally launch at the Gala Night at Coffs Harbour Regional Conservatorium. By the weekend’s end, the orchestra will share the stage with Ars Nova Napoli for the festival’s grand finale.
Messages of Love is the newest community arts project from Hayley Egan, following Those Before, The Belonging Tour and Fire and Water. Combining placemaking, community storytelling and group singing, it is a project whose details are not yet ready to be revealed.
The program also includes more storytelling from The Loom Storytelling Collective, following its sold-out event last September, and Bellingen Playback Theatre, with both exploring the Identity theme.
None of this would be possible without support. Taranta Festival is grateful for funding from the Regional Arts Fund, Bellingen Shire Council, Arts Mid North Coast, Coffs Harbour City Council, the Department of Home Affairs through a Multicultural Grassroots Initiative grant, Create NSW, Multicultural NSW through the Stronger Together program, and the Italian institutions: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministero degli Affari Esteri), Istituto Italiano Di Cultura Sydney and COMITES. Thanks also go to Nexus Arts (Adelaide), IGA Bellingen, Kombu Wholefood, Bello Beef and the Belfry Guesthouse.
What Taranta Festival Where Bellingen Memorial Hall When 30 Oct – 1 Nov
Image: Alessandro Santacaterina
