Canberra International Music Festival
The Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF) is a music festival based in Canberra, Australia. It was founded by Ursula Callus (1939–2001), former President of Pro Musica Incorporated.
The first Festival was originally called the Canberra International Chamber Music Festival and was held in April 1994. It won the Canberra Critics Circle Award for Music Innovation. Since 1997 the Festival has been an annual event, and in 2008 it was renamed the Canberra International Music Festival.
From 2005 to 2008 it went through a period of rapid expansion, due to the generosity of Arts patron Barbara Blackman and now is a leading classical music festival in Australia presenting around 30 concerts annually. Peter Sculthorpe is composer laureate of the festival and was the subject of a significant retrospective in 2009, where his opera/music theatre work Rites of Passage was remounted for the first time in 35 years. This focus was timed to coincide with his 80th birthday.
Other recent significant commissions and premieres in the CIMF include Arvo Pärt's Fourth Symphony, Henryk Górecki's ...songs are sung... for string orchestra, the concert premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara's The Gift of the Magi and Peter Sculthorpe's "Shining Island".
Artistic Director Christopher Latham succeeded Nicole Canham in 2009.