Are regional music festivals more popular than their capital city counterparts? If Tyalgum Music Festival is anything to go by then this could very well be the case. Locals have every right to be proud of this event, founded 28 years ago, which celebrates classical as well as world and experimental music. The majestic setting cradled by magnificent mountains is spectacular and the Festival’s interactions with this quaint town’s commercial nooks and crannies percolates from morning until midnight. Flutterbies, the restaurant, hosted The Heart Collectors band and guitarist Anthony Garcia after each evening’s formal concert.

Anna McMichael

There’s something irresistible about encountering live music in unexpected settings. One of the event’s charms were the free, at times zany pop up performances. Pedestrians strolling down Coolman Street, the main drag, were surprised by a double bass, guitar, cello and vocal improvisation in Yasna, the town’s elegant art gallery. Young pianists played in Flutterbies, a Queensland Conservatorium big band fired the local pub’s courtyard and Comfort Music by Alice Chance, an opera-on-the-move, roamed across the lush oval and up and down the town’s main thoroughfare. Informal presentations, such as a violin soliloquy by co-director Anna...