The Adelaide Festival’s new music micro-festival looks set to break a few more moulds than usual.

In 2010 the earth’s crust moved three centimetres under an Icelandic icecap. The ensuing volcanic eruption spewed ash hundreds of metres into the air, closing airspace over twenty countries and disrupting a multitude of travel plans: a small tectonic movement with dramatic consequences.

One year later a brilliant young Israeli conductor took over as Music Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. A passionate supporter of experimental music, Ilan Volkov had a keen understanding of how small shifts can signal radical changes. How in 1952, for example, John Cage’s ‘silent’ work 4’33” re-defined the word ‘music’. And in Volkov’s role as curator of the Tectonics Festival, he has been trying to re-define the role of the symphony orchestra in the 21st century.

The first Tectonics Festival (Reykjavik 2013) emerged from Volkov’s dual roles as symphonic conductor and experimental music promoter. He co-owns a small Tel Aviv club where, in between orchestral engagements, he showcases cutting edge improvising musicians such as Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O’Malley and Jon Rose.

Volkov has also been curious to find out if “an orchestra, the 19th-century beast, can be more radical...