Sunday Arts Magazine

11 Jun 2017

Interview: Fest Director Ali Rae Jones–Melb Warehouse Music Fest

Arts Festival, Music, Music Festival, Performing Arts

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Interview: Fest Director Ali Rae Jones–Melb Warehouse Music Fest

Soprano, Producer and Festival Director Alison Rae (Ali) Jones is here to talk about the inaugural Melbourne Warehouse Music Festival (MWMF) which is still in the stage of crowdfunding and will happen on 4 & 5 November at the Schoolhouse Studios in Collingwood. Tickets are on sale through Trybooking in July. Ali outlines her opera singing career in Australia, London, Europe and the USA which included singing at Elton John’s birthday! 10 years ago she returned to Australia and started up an independent , concert opera company called La Prima Opera. This allowed her to take high quality opera to rural/regional areas and also do ‘opera in the laneways’ in alternative venues; usually in the CBD. The idea for MWMF came when she happened upon the Schoolhouse Studios which also had a large open Warehouse-like space. She booked it for one performance of her opera company but then thought it’d also be great to have other music genres. She contacted a wide range of musicians she knew, or had heard of, and found great interest. She stopped at 8 different music genres and booked the warehouse for a weekend in November. She explains the ticketing system, how the musicians will be timetabled and the crowdfunding system which she set up under advisement. This funding is purely for expenses so that all the money from the tickets goes to the musicians! As the funding is through the Australian Cultural Fund, all donations are tax deductible.