WITH the overarching theme of “Common Ground”, the Four Winds Festival at Bermagui is about to burst into life over Easter.

With a new administrative team at the helm and a line-up of musical coups for creative director Lindy Hume, now in her second and final year in the role, the biggest of which is getting Sydney’s Pinchgut Opera down to the bay for the first time. 

They will perform the rare Handel opera “Acis and Galatea” in a ticketed performance in the site’s Sound Shell and open to, well, the four winds.

Up the hill in the Sapphire Lounge, where the Windsong Pavilion has been restyled to provide “conversations, cocktails and conviviality”, Mikelangelo and The Black Sea Gentlemen will perform a show built around their early album, “Journey Through the Land of Shadows”.

Other Sapphire Lounge stars will be Van Diemen’s Fiddles – Julia Fredersdorff, Rachel Meyers and Emily Sheppard joined by piano accordionist Dave McNamara – performing nostalgic folk tunes from around the world.

Continuing the innovative approach to what has sometimes been a rarefied classical festival, there’s even going to be some film. 

Newly digitised by the National Film and Sound Archive, “Leonard’s Beautiful Pictures” are hand-tinted silent films promising extraordinary visions of faraway lands, stage magic and fantastical imaginings from the collection of the late vaudeville entrepreneur Leonard Corrick, enhanced by Dean Stevenson’s new score, with effects performed live by an eccentric trio of musicians. 

When I caught up with executive director Gabrielle Waters and artistic director for the umbrella organisation, Matthew Hoy, I find they’ve been busy coming to grips with the workings of Four Winds after the previous executive director, David Francis, left to work at the Wollongong Conservatorium and a new team was engaged.

“We are on the home stretch,” Waters tells me with relief, “Lindy’s got some great ideas.”

Hoy says it’s been a “pretty intense journey” coming into the organisation at short notice, and also having to navigate their way through lockdowns.

“So Gabby and I took the opportunity to have a look at the whole thing from the inside out and used the time effectively to consult with the public,” he says.

To that end, the festival will open on Friday, April 15, with a free world premiere event called “Home Stretch”, a musical love song to the Tathra-Bermagui Road, performed along the road.

As well, in a follow-up to a previous initiative, the Djinama Yilaga Choir will join musos from Candelo in another free event, “Songs from Yuin Country”.

While Waters, a former bassoonist who moved into music administration 20 years ago, is necessarily based in Bermagui, Hoy is still a working cellist based in Melbourne, where he also gives advice to orchestras. 

He comes to Bermagui once a month and believes Melbourne is a suitable place from which to connect with people who might be engaged as performers.

The pair are especially proud of having been able to bring opera into the festival for the first time and, with the help of a whiz-kid sound engineer to assist in subtle amplification, they expect “Acis and Galatea” to knock the socks off patrons.

That will happen on the Saturday night in a ticketed event, but Pinchgut will return to the outdoor Sound Shell on the closing evening with “The Spiritual Forest,” liturgical works by Monteverdi, lighting up the Sound Shell as darkness falls.

Another innovation is the pairing of pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska with arts executive and meditation practitioner Rainer Jozeps for a guided meditation through contemplative works by Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Arvo Pärt and Pēteris Vasks. Before and after each piece, silence will be held, culminating in John Cage’s ”4’33”

On the final afternoon, William Barton will perform two of his most powerful works, after which there will be a performance of Tan Dun’s “Prayer and Blessing”, created in response to COVID-19, with a message of community in its text by Chinese philosopher Laozi that Hoy believes gives weight to the theme of “common ground”.

Four Winds Festival, Barragga Bay, Bermagui. Details and bookings at fourwinds.com.au