The Adelaide Guitar Festival Tsar talks about the challenges, reveals his guitar heroes and gives us his top picks.

This is your third Adelaide International Guitar Festival as Artistic Director. Do you think it’s getting easier?

From an operational perspective, definitely. The first one for me was an absolute minefield with an incredible amount of learning. I was so lucky to be surrounded by amazing people at the Festival Centre. They’re absolute pros. It was easy for me to learn from them that first year. And then the second was a breeze – and this one’s going really, really well.

With the first one there were lots of question marks because the festival itself had gone through a massive transformation. 2007 and 2008 were huge 10-day events with a massive outdoor stage and the targets were very, very different. They streamlined it down completely when I came on board and so really we had to relaunch.

Coming up with a balance, genre-wise, was always going to be tricky but I think straight away we achieved something that worked really well. The feedback was fantastic. So now it’s just a question of using that kind of model. There’s obviously a very strong...