They’re back in 2021: concerts shorter than a lunch-hour, featuring local instrumentalists and singers.
The Tuesday Lunchbox Concerts were the sleeper hits of late 2019 and early 2020 as office workers, shoppers and visitors discovered that live music was great with a sandwich. Once again, the ‘Baroque super group’ Van Diemen’s Band is partnering with the City of Hobart to present a new series of middle-of-the-day events in the city’s nineteenth-century Town Hall Ballroom.
Starting on 20 April, audiences can enjoy five programs of beautiful Baroque, kinetic klezmer, four-hand piano and much more. All concerts begin at 1.05PM – although the opening concert (starring the Town Hall organ played by visiting Melbourne based virtuoso/composer Calvin Bowman, accompanied by VDB) will also have an earlier 11.30AM iteration in expectation of public demand.
The ticket price if booked online is $10. If you’re an impulse buyer and decide to front up in person on the day, entry is $15.
For VDB’s Artistic Director Julia Fredersdorff, this is a gesture of thanks to Tasmania.
“Even though the state coped better than any through the pandemic, 2020 was still a very difficult year for many of us – and especially for artists,” she says. “VDB wants to celebrate this new phase of what we hope is a vaccine-led recovery with music. We also want to give something back to those who supported us last year; coming out in Covid-compliant droves to hear us whenever we were able to play, showing us that live music was something important in their lives.”
Fredersdorff is effusive about the City of Hobart’s support. “The partnership with the Council is vitally important to us, both in making these concerts financially viable under continuing crowd size restrictions and guaranteeing affordability for our community by preserving ticket prices at their 2019 levels. We think great music is a right – not a privilege – and the City obviously agrees!”
After the organ work of Bach, Handel and More on 20 April, the program switches to Brahms chamber music played by a new and exciting arrival on the Tassie music scene, the Hartz Piano Trio (27 April). On 4 May, well-known violin/accordion duo Meyers & McNamara continue the Lunchbox tradition of presenting world music in a fascinating mix of soulful Jewish melodies with more contemporary sounds in Klezmerfest.
The Tasmanian-based bass-baritone Tom Flint teams up with pianist (and Music Director of St David’s Cathedral) Tom Rimes in an all-English program spanning four centuries, with masterworks by Finzi and Gibbons (11 May). And the Lunchbox Concert Series for autumn concludes with a flurry of fingers in a piano four-hand recital by Karen Smithies and Jennifer Marten-Smith. Side-by-side, they’ll put Musica Viva Tasmania’s famous Steinway grand through its paces (One Piano, Four Hands!, 18 May).
The Tuesday Lunchbox Concert Series returns for a five-concert spring season beginning on 24 August – more details to follow.
Full program information and bookings at www.vandiemensband.com.au.
Van Diemen’s Band. Images supplied.
