Musicians offer a new artistic lead for folk festival

Michael Sollis being interviewed for “In His Words.” Photo: Liam Budge

by Helen Musa

A TRIUMVIRATE of musicians with deep roots in the Canberra arts community will head up the 2024 National Folk Festival.

Contracts have been signed in the past few days and co-artistic directors for the event will be Michael Sollis, Holly Downes and Chris Stone.

Their credentials are strong, double-bass player Downes having founded the String Contingent while directing  and programming for Majors Creek Festival; fiddler Stone. the director of the Yarra Valley’s trade/folk music camp, Stringmania, and composer-mandolinist Sollis having founded Canberra’s classical music group The Griffyn Ensemble and been the artistic director of education for Musica Viva Australia.

Sollis is also an active member of Canberra’s arts community as a member of the advocacy organisation Canberra Arts Action Group and a keen supporter of the Rugby League club, the Gungahlin Bulls.

All are graduates of the ANU School of Music and all are veterans of the National Folk Festival. In a joint statement where they outline their four principles as excellence, integration, inclusivity and sustainability, they say: “We… have been consistently involved in the festival since we were teenagers. Now in our late 30s, with a vast collective breadth of experience as musicians, composers, artistic directors and programmers, we want to lead the festival into a new era of vibrancy, excellence, and inclusivity.”

Heidi Pritchard, managing director of the festival, confirms the relief of the festival at having made this appointment, praising  their “complimentary and contrasting skill sets” while adding: “The standard of applications for the role was outstanding, and if these applicants are the future of Australian folk festivals, our future as a community is in good hands”.

It’s a big job running the Folk Festival and last year, after Dave O’Neill and Jo Creswell became joint artistic directors and were deep in preparation they were forced to pull out when O’Neill had an operation.

Health could also be an issue now. Sollis has made no secret of the fact – indeed he spoke about it publicly on screen in Liam Budge’s recent show at The Street Theatre, “In His Words: Voices of Fatherhood” – he has been undergoing therapy for cancer.

But in between treatments, he’s managed to keep up a cracking pace in projects with the Griffyn Ensemble, which has traversed themes from indigenous astronomy to the environment .

And in his longtime collaborators, Downes and Stone he has good hands and good ears as they plan the 2024 festival.

All this augurs well for the National Folk Festival, which after a turbulent few years, looks as if it’s getting back to what Canberrans and other Australians expect from the event – folk music.

First published in Canberra City News, July 6, 2023