As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Gladstone in Queensland, looking out on the astonishing heavy-machinery activity of a waterfront dominated by LNG terminals and power station smokestacks. I’m on tour with the Queensland Symphony and we have an education concert and then a big free outdoor event this evening at the Marina Stage.

We’ve already been in Rockhampton and the concerts there were almost full at the Pilbeam Theatre by the pretty Fitzroy River. The reason they were full is that they were free. Over the last years the paying audiences on the orchestra’s yearly northern tour have started to contract, but this new free model means audiences have returned like water to Lake Eyre, all due to some passionate corporate sponsorship.

ERM Power does wonderful things for the QSO. Instead of a sponsorship being an amount of money, the company buys tickets and gives them to schools and people who maybe wouldn’t think of going to a concert, or wouldn’t have the resources to go. Sometimes, like Australia Pacific LNG in Gladstone, it underwrites the entire concert which means that it becomes a free event. A free ticket is a lovely thing – it puts...