13
JUN
PHILLIP JOHNSTON 'PUFFS OF SMOKE'
8:00 PM | VENUE: SPRINGWOOD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Puffs of Smoke is a live musical experience unlike anything you’ve seen before in the Blue Mountains — a program of rare silent films from before 1920, accompanied by stunning original music composed and performed live on saxophone by the extraordinary Phillip Johnston.
Dramatic bushranger melodramas, wartime cartoons, newsreel footage, and fragments of the very films that launched an industry — including The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) and Soldiers of the Cross (1900) — flicker on screen while Johnston conjures a mesmerising soundscape of improvised saxophone, looping samples, and overdubbed arrangements for up to 16 saxophones. Woven between the films, short narratives stitch it all together into a vivid fantasia — part concert, part history lesson, part cinematic séance.
This is new music meeting old ghosts. Jazz, silent film, and forgotten history collide in one singular night.
15
AUG
BERNARD VAN ROSSUM & SYDNEY'S FINEST
8:00 PM | VENUE: SPRINGWOOD PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
One of Europe’s most exciting jazz voices comes to the Blue Mountains.
Bernard van Rossum is a Dutch-Spanish saxophonist, composer and arranger whose restless musical imagination has taken him from the North Sea Jazz Festival to the Cape Town Jazz Festival, from the Flamenco Biennale to the stages of Indonesia and Mexico. For one special night, he brings his singular sound to Springwood — joined by some of Sydney’s top jazz musicians for an evening of world-class improvisation.
This is a rare chance to catch an internationally celebrated musician in an intimate local setting, performing alongside the cream of the Sydney jazz scene. A night of extraordinary musicianship. Don’t miss it.
17
OCT
Featuring Guy Strazz, Ben Hauptmann, Aaron Flower, and Jess Green, four of Australia’s most distinctive guitar voices come together in an electrifying instrumental quartet unlike anything you’ve heard before.
Expect shimmering harmonies layered with fluid improvisation, rhythms that shift from meditative to fiery, and a palette that spans jazz, world, and contemporary textures. Their interplay is conversational and deeply responsive — weaving delicate acoustic lines with electrified intensity — creating music that feels both expansive and intimate, rooted in virtuosity but alive with spontaneity.
Strazz’s lyrical global influences meet Hauptmann’s fluid virtuosity; Flower’s fearless improvisation collides with Green’s bold rhythmic invention. Together they create a dynamic conversation of strings — intricate, grooving, and deeply expressive.
This is guitar music reimagined. Fiery, intimate, and unmistakably Australian.