For the final program of 2025, Simon Moore was invited into the home of a trailblazer of early music performance – not just in Australia, but also in the wider world. Winsome Evans founded The Renaissance Players in 1959, and quickly became a leader in the field. She appears on 33 albums, and has the aptitude to have taught herself to play that many instruments too. She’s also a composer, having written and arranged music for radio, film and TV, and for half a century at Sydney University she taught and inspired generations of our musicians.

This conversation tracks Winsome’s early life from childhood to the formation, development and success of The Renaissance Players, as well as her life-long academic career. We hear about the music she has loved to perform, and the people she loved to perform it with, plus the instruments she has found, restored and played.

Sydney doesn’t put away its party hats after the New Year is rung in, because from January 8, the city comes alive once again for the Sydney Festival. Simon Moore sat down with new Festival Director Kris Nelson to provide some highlights of the upcoming festival and revealing his hopes and ambitions for it as it reaches half a century.

Festivals are very much in Kris Nelson’s blood, having just finished a six-and-a-half year stint as Director of the London International Festival of Theatre, and prior to that having a long run as Director of the Dublin Fringe Festival. Kris traces his personal and professional journey, from growing up in Saskatoon, Canada, through grassroots theatre and festivals, to leadership roles in Montreal and beyond. He reflects on the energy of fringe culture, and the joys of presenting unique shows that find the festival environment as their homes.

The Sydney Festival runs from 8 to 25 January.

A composer, writer, and presenter, Andrew Ford is a unique and highly valued voice in Australia’s musical landscape. His music has been heard all around the world, from Sydney to New York, and London to Singapore. It’s been conducted by Jeffrey Tate and Benjamin Northey, played by Piers Lane and Lisa Moore, and sung by Yvonne Kenney and Teddy Tahu-Rhodes. He’s educated us with his 11 books, most recently The Shortest History of Music, and entertained and enlightened us with his three-decade long presentation of The Music Show on Radio National.

In this conversation, Andrew reflects on discovering composition as a teenager and how an encounter with Michael Tippett shaped his artistic outlook. He discusses balancing technique with intuition, the magic of hearing a work for the first time, and accepting that self-criticism and the realities of needing to finish a work are part of the creative process. Andrew also provides some fascinating cultural observations, especially on the history and future of music, innovation versus tradition, how audiences shape what endures, and how genres once thought ephemeral have matured into a kind of canon.

This program was recorded at the 2025 Australian Festival of Chamber Music. The next Australian Festival of Chamber Music will take place in Cairns from July 24 to August 1, 2026.