THE Four Winds Festival is blowing its trumpet as the biennial Easter event draws near – well, not just its trumpet, but pretty well any kind of instrument that can be blown – clarinets, oboes, bassoons and French horns, too.

Staged in the Sound Shell and Windsong Pavilion at Bermagui, it has become a drawcard for lovers of classical music.

So loved was the festival by the late museum director Andrew Sayers that he allowed Four Winds to feature his south coast paintings in its 2016 Four Winds brochure.

Clarinettist and former director of the Australian Academy of Music, Paul Dean, is the newest artistic director. This is his first festival and he’s steaming ahead on the idea of wind instruments for Four Winds.

Now head of woodwind at the Conservatorium in home town Brisbane, he’s using his new-found time to do things such as Four Winds and to pick up his career as an international composer and performer.

With Europe’s Navarra String Quartet, British violinist Jack Liebeck and cellist Li-Wei Qin on the bill, Dean brings a cosmopolitan touch to Four Winds, saying: “This is about international stars and a really loyal, local, wonderful audience in an incredible part of the world.”

He praises the pavilion in the bush for having “the greatest acoustics in all of Australia”.

There’ll be a couple of new ventures in the new Windsong Chamber Music Series that starts before the main event and “After Dark”, nightly performances by indigenous singer-songwriter Radical Son in the Bermagui Community Centre, temporarily restyled to become the Double Bar.

Recently appointed CEO David Francis has come to Four Winds with an extraordinary management pedigree. Most recently general manager of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, he was before that director of arts for the Dartington Hall Trust in Devon, UK, and Dean says getting Francis is “a real feather in the cap for Four Winds”.

“I like to work in organisations at critical points,” Francis says.

“I develop and lead organisations to new funding and what needs to be grasped – it’s been a case of being in the right place at the right time.”

Four Winds, he says, offers unique opportunities, with the future possibly seeing a year-round series of events focusing on music in the natural surroundings.

The core of the festival is the classical program, beginning with the free community opening concert on Good Friday featuring Ensemble Offspring and fLING Physical Theatre.

The festival kicks off in earnest on Easter Saturday, when the highlight will be Dvo?ák’s “Wind Serenade” featuring nine players, including Dean himself, followed by 80 artists in 21 events.

Central works will be Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor played by Liebeck with the Festival Orchestra and the world premiere of James Ledger’s 2016 Four Winds-commissioned work.

Four Winds concludes on Easter Sunday with Dean’s personal favourite, HK Gruber’s “Frankenstein”, performed on a stage littered with children’s toys and percussion. The composer once called it “a Pan-demonium” and Paul Dean, for one, couldn’t be more pleased at that possibility.

Four Winds 2016 Easter Festival, Bermagui, March 22-27. Bookings and program at fourwinds.com.au or call 6493 3414.

.