Financial concerns arise after Executive Director checks himself into a medical institution.

The announcement on Tuesday that the inaugural Sydney Sings Festival would be postponed owing to the “unexpected illness of the Event Owner and Executive Director, Mr Jarrod Carland” shocked and disappointed the Australian arts scene. The new festival had been substantially funded by Destination NSW and it was hoped that it would attract up to 11,000 visitors and earn $5 million of revenue. It now appears that Carland’s sister company, Brisbane Baroque Ltd, has failed to pay the majority of the artists who took part in the Queensland early music festival last April, and that Carland checked himself into a medical institution in Victoria as long as four weeks ago.

A former actor and experienced arts administrator, Carland has worked in tandem with Artistic Director Leo Schofield over five years on the successful Hobart and Brisbane Baroque festivals as well as on Sydney Sings, but Limelight understands that only a handful of the artists have received payment for this year’s event. Despite repeated attempts to contact Brisbane Baroque Ltd, major organisations like the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Antipodes and the Camerata of St. John’s, as well as the majority of the cast of Handel’s Agrippina and a host of individual Australian artists, have been left asking questions. “We are currently in negotiations with the event organisers,” QSO’s interim chief executive Rodney Phillips told Fairfax Media yesterday. “We have been in touch with them to inquire what is going on but there has been no official response yet.” Carland has been described as “unavailable” to organisers and creditors for over a month now, while his website has been taken offline and described as “under renovation”.

Schofield, one of Australia’s most popular, respected and experienced impresarios, issued a statement on Tuesday in which he expressed disappointment on hearing of “Mr. Carland’s prolonged illness and especially of the outcome as the public reaction to the new event and to the program has been overwhelmingly positive”. Limelight understands from sources associated with Brisbane Baroque that Schofield has never been a director of any of Carland’s companies and would therefore have had no direct access to financial records. It now emerges that the two companies, Sydney Sings Ltd. and Brisbane Baroque Ltd. are each headed by the same team of directors: Carland, his business partner and boyfriend Shannon Pigram and another member of Carland’s extended family.

From the Australian Business Register it appears that Carland has been a director of at least six producing companies over the last decade and sources have suggested to Limelight that money may have been transferred from one event to support the other. Questions have also been raised about why Brisbane Baroque is struggling to pay artists when the perception, on the ground at least, is that the festival was well supported and well attended. Meanwhile on his classical music gossip site Slipped Disc, Norman Lebrecht claims that “behind cupped hands, there are suggestions the Government failed to deliver on a past minister’s promises,” a statement that some have interpreted as referring to former Minister for the Arts Senator George Brandis, a long term supporter of the previous Baroque festivals.

Representatives from Carland’s company have declined so far to comment on the situation, but Brisbane artists and others have spoken to Limelight of their sympathy for, and personal loyalty to Schofield, who it is believed is working furiously behind the scenes to ensure a decent outcome for those still unpaid. Meanwhile, Tourism and Events Queensland, the state’s peak tourism body, which has a three-year funding arrangement with Brisbane Baroque Ltd, has indicated that they expect the festival to continue next year.