From cows to elephants, there are many stories of animals responding to music. So what are the preferences of the animal companions of Australia’s music professionals?

Forget your troubles and set sail with Royal Caribbean’s BRAVO Cruise of the Performing Arts. As Jo Litson discovers, it’s a wonderfully relaxing way to indulge in an almost endless supply of music and food, not to mention some tropical island bliss.

Australian singers abound, including a dastardly Peter Coleman-Wright as Don Alfonso, in Opera Holland Park's Così.

The Australian flautist’s 2018 series at The Concourse will feature Australian artists Tamara-Anna Cislowska, Taryn Fiebig, Nexas Saxophone Quartet and more.

Australians can thank comic genius Barry Humphries for the revival of interest in songs from the interwar Weimar Republic in Germany. As a young man he trawled Melbourne’s used bookshops and found a collection of scores from composers such as Kurt Weill, Franz Schreker, Hanns Eisler and Alexander von Zemlinsky, among others – all of them obscure names (apart from Weill, thanks to Louis Armstrong’s then recent version of Mack The Knife). The discovery sparked a lifelong passion, so much so that he put on a Weimar show with “kamikaze” cabaret star Meow Meow and the Australian Chamber Orchestra a few seasons back. More recently, several classical artists have turned their attention to this period in music history and the composers that either went into exile across the world or died in the Nazi death camps. Now it’s the turn of Australian baritone Peter Coleman-Wright and the excellent Nexas saxophone quartet with Ballads of the Pleasant Life on ABC Classics. There’s a good smattering of Weill, including favourites September Song, Mack the Knife and the ballad that gives the album its title, but the real finds are the political and work songs of Eisler and Zemlinsky and, a little pearl,…

Six sopranos, a mezzo, and a tenor are in the running to win the scholarship, which has a combined prize pool of $58,500.

A musically rich and entertaining step back into the Weimar Era.

One of Australia’s great singing actors on turning the music of the era into a cabaret show and a new CD

Richard Tognetti's new odyssey leads a line up including Brett Dean's Hamlet, Orwell's 1984, Messiaen's Turangalîla and more.

Co-AD Eddie Perfect discusses a broad line-up from Alan Cumming and Meow Meow to jazz, string quartets and dance.

★★★★☆ A terrific cast in an exuberant semi-staged production of a quaintly old-fashioned show.

Limelight congratulates this year’s artistic luminaries recognised for services to the arts.