The Tectonics curator talks about who’s on his bill of fare and why contemporary music matters.

You’re curating the Tectonics Festival in Adelaide. What inspires you about this kind of event?

It’s a combination of both my interests in contemporary music: composing music for orchestra, which I’ve been doing for the last 10-15 years, and then also working with improvisers and other kind of sound artists who come from a different background. I wanted to have a project that mixes that in a very unusual, interesting way so that an audience can hear both classic works from the 60s and 70s as well as new works by composers who work in other genres of contemporary music. Putting these side by side in an event means these things are not so separated as they usually are.

You’ve run Tectonics before in Reykjavik, Glasgow and Tel Aviv. How are you custom building this festival for Adelaide?

The main concentration is on local artists and so we have a lot of commissions for younger composers. One of the things that really interests me is to introduce to the orchestra totally new artists that have never worked there before and to get some new energy coming...