Creative Australia pledges $500k to contemporary music touring

Creative Australia has pledged over $500k to support 20 tours of original Australian music under the latest round of funding from the Contemporary Music Touring Program.

The tours, spanning pop and R’n’B to art and experimental music, will bring music and multimedia performance to capital cities and regional centres.

Rubiks Collective performing A Book of Hours in 2023. Photo © Darren Gill

The funding includes a $300k ‘injection’ from Music Australia, with a dedicated $50k to be put towards tour promotion in Australian music media outlets.

Tar virtuoso Hamed Sadeghi has received funding to take his group, Eishan Ensemble, on an album launch tour across QLD, NSW and the ACT in February–March 2025. 

Fusing Persian and Western classical and contemporary tradition, Eishan have performed across Europe and Australia and its upcoming album, Northern Rhapsody, will be released by French label ACEL Production later in 2025.

Melbourne’s Rubiks Collective will take A Book Of Hours on an Australian tour. The 2023 piece blends stop-motion video works by Sal Cooper, live and filmed choreography from Gerard Van Dyck, and an original soundtrack composed by Kate Neal. It will be performed at the Canberra International Music Festival on 3 May.  

Luminescence Chamber Singers will also take Andrew Ford’s Red Dirt Hymns around the country. With current stops set for Orange, Bowral and Bermagui (and more to be announced), this same tour was also granted NSW Regional Arts Touring support earlier this month.

Queensland-based artist Erik Griswold will tour Unnamed Road, a collection of improvisations created in collaboration with composer Jon Rose. With Griswold on prepared piano and Rose on tenor and standard violin, the works will investigate ideas of musical originality (as gleaned from their Bandcamp artist statements – though both conclude with the caveat, “I could be looking at this all wrong”).

Unnamed Road by Jon Rose and Erik Griswold

Composer, trumpeter and electronic artist Peter Knight has earned funding to support a launch tour for the debut album of group TL;DR (‘Too long; didn’t read’, in internet slang). The ensemble comprises Knight, his son drummer Quinn Knight, guitarist Theo Carbo and bassist and vocalist Helen Svoboda. 

Speak Percussion performing Scream Star. Photo © Bryony Jackson

With the funding, Speak Percussion will tour its Percussion, Conversation, Degustation program. Led by Duré Dara, the recipient of the 2024 Luminary Award (VIC) at the Art Music Awards, the program functions as a series of ‘menus’, pairing improvisational music and multimedia performance with food. 

The Queensland-based Tibetan singer/songwriter Tenzin Choegyal will receive support to tour Whispering Sky, his latest album released in August of this year, The album, built with collaborators from Toronto, New York, London, Tokyo, Nagan, QLD and NSW.

Whispering Sky ནམ་མཁའི་སྔུར་སྒྲ། by Tenzin Choegyal

New York-based Australian jazz guitarist Quentin Angus has also received funding to tour a brand new release for his ensemble, the Quentin Angus Quintet.

“This uplift aims to help artists amplify their upcoming tours through Australian music media, increasing discoverability and strengthening the fabric of Australia’s contemporary music ecology,” said Director of Music Australia Millie Millgate.

The full list of recipients of the Contemporary Music Touring Fund can be found here.

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