The Bendigo Chamber Music Festival has unveiled its 2021 program, which will showcase Australian talent and reopen the city’s Capital Theatre after it closed its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The five-day festival, which launched in 2020 with co-directors Chris Howlett and Howard Penny at the helm, starred the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in its inaugural event, but like festivals and organisations all around the country, it will be looking to Australia’s local talent in 2021.

A performance in the Ulumbarra Theatre at the 2020 Bendigo Chamber Music Festival. Photo courtesy of BCMF

This year’s guests will include oboist Thomas Hutchinson, clarinettist David Griffiths, soprano Jacqueline Porter and pianists Daniel de Borah and Benjamin Martin. Concertmasters Natsuko Yoshimoto and Sophie Rowell will lead a string line-up including Matthew Tomkins, Robin Wilson, Chris Moore and Tobias Breider, plus Howlett and Penny.

The first festival was a “fabulous, sell-out success” Howlett tells Limelight. “It was great to welcome so...