Southbank Events Listings

2013 Australian International Motor Show

The Australian International Motor Show (AIMS) is an annual auto show held biennially between Melbourne and Sydney. Both cities have a long running history of motor shows. Melbourne held an annual show from 1925 - 2009 establishing it as Australia's longest running motor show. From 2004 the Sydney Motor Show adopted the name Australian International Motor Show, this was in respect of the global prestige the show had developed, being recognised globally in the top ten automotive shows. The Australian International Motor Show joint venture began in 2010 in Sydney. Melbourne is hosting the 2013 Australian International Motor Show. Tickets will be available on the Australian International Motor Show website.

ACO – Trout Quintet & Quartet for the End of Time

This concert pairs two great works inspired by very different experiences away from home, both written for the musicians available and, as a result, for unusual combinations of instruments. Aged 22, Schubert had his first holiday in the country. In the Trout, he captures the mood of those carefree summer days and his ecstatic delight in the countryside, in warm, beguiling melodies and harmonies. A prisoner of war, Messiaen wrote the Quartet for the End of Time for the musicians he found in the camp, premiering it to an audience of inmates and guards. "Never" he said, "was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension." Critic Alex Ross calls it "the most ethereally beautiful music of the 20th century...as overpowering now as it was on that frigid night in 1941." ACO Principals are joined by clarinettist Paul Dean and dynamic young pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar, making his Australian debut. SCHUBERT - Piano Quintet, "Trout" MESSIAEN - Quartet for the End of Time Helena Rathbone - Violin Christopher Moore - Viola Timo-Veikko Valve - Cello Maxime Bibeau - Double Bass Paul Dean - Clarinet Saleem Abboud Ashkar - Piano

Building & Home Improvement Expo

The Building & Home Improvement Expo is Australia's number one building and renovating Expo, supported by the Master Builders' Association of Australia. Promising an inspiring array of fresh ideas and products, visitors will find all they need to get started on their new building or home improvement project. Over 300 companies are on-hand to give advice on the latest home improvement and building products and services giving home improvers and building professionals plenty of great ideas. See new product demonstrations and learn from industry experts at free seminars covering the latest thinking for building and home improvement. Sustainable building solutions and products will be an Expo feature; a life-size house will be built demonstrating sustainable, environmentally friendly, energy efficient, fire and termite resistant alternatives to traditional building methods. Visitors will discover hundreds of green ideas to improve the health of your home and environment - plus save you money. Supported by the Master Builders Association of Australia, visitors will discover the Master Builders' Winning Homes. If you're looking for fresh inspiration and leading edge products from your next home show visit, the Master Builders' Building & Home Improvement Expo will not let you down. Like the Building & Home Improvement Expo on Facebook to keep up-to-date with the latest event news, new products, special attractions and Facebook only special offers & ticket giveaways. Search Building Home Improvement Expo.

Corporations, People & the Planet

An extraordinary array of talent headlined by acclaimed actress Sigourney Weaver, scientist David Suzuki and musician/humanitarian Bob Geldof will examine what it takes for businesses to be sustainable over the long term at an event in Melbourne on April 26 2012. Corporations, People & the Planet - aims to bring together businesspeople, environmentalists, academics, young people and scientists for the common cause of ensuring the future of the planet. Weaver, Geldof and Suzuki along with sustainability advocate Professor L. Hunter Lovins, founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, will kick start the three-day event with conference style presentations for up to 5,300 delegates. On the two days following, April 27 and 28, RMIT will host the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme - an initiative that brings mayors from the world's most innovative cities, leaders in the corporate and non-governmental organisation arenas as well as a number of international academics working on the ethics and practice of sustainability.

Family Day at Polly Woodside

Step aboard and come celebrate Polly Woodside's 126th Birthday! Join them for a day filled with high seas action with roving performers, face painting, arts and crafts, maritime activities, a jumping castle, and of course swashbuckling pirate adventure! Come dressed as a pirate for your chance to be in the draw for some great prizes and giveaways!

Good Food & Wine Show 2011

Celebrate Melbourne's love affair with good food, top wines, tempting chocolates, delectable cheeses, and of course, great coffee! Discover flavour and inspiration as you lose yourself in hundreds of tasty food samplings and wine tasting Spend a day exploring the ultimate food and wine playground. Watch live demonstrations from celebrity chefs. Indulge yourself in a delectable array of local and international produce. See the latest in kitchen appliances and cookware and stock your pantry with new and exciting products. For further information, please visit the website.

Herald Sun Home Show 2011

Love your home? Then find the latest for your kitchen, bathroom, outdoor living space or home improvement project at the Herald Sun Home Show - Melbourne's longest running building and renovation expo. Taking place at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre from Thursday 16 - Sunday 19 August. The Herald Sun Home Show is the essential ingredient for your renovation to not only increase your property value, but also make it a place you can enjoy for many years. This year discover innovative solutions, great design ideas, renovation advice and great bargains. To find out the latest show information and buy tickets online, visit the website.

HIA Home Show

Home owners, renovators and builders will find a showcase of new products and ideas for their next project at the iconic HIA Home Show. New this year is the 'HIA Award Winners Showcase' where you'll see the best-of-the-best award winning home designs and building products - a "must inspect" for renovators and home improvers. Another prime location is the Building and Renovation Showroom showcasing samples of the latest building and home improvement products. There's loads of advice too - from the experts on the Building and Renovation Stage to the 'Ask an Expert' specialists. Bring along your plans to receive a dedicated free consultation from HIA builders, HIA GreenSmart tradesmen, interior designers and HIA kitchen and bathroom designers. With more than 300 exhibitors showing the latest products and services, visitors are sure to leave full of ideas, advice and products to improve their homes and lives. Visit the website for full event details, trend articles, expert profiles and to purchase your tickets online.

MSO Metropolis New Music Festival - Coming Together

Witness the organic growth of an un-conducted 'super ensemble.' The six members of eighth blackbird throw down the gauntlet, flinging themselves into Derek Bermel's wild Balkan romp, Tied Shifts. MSO players join the party for John Adams' Shaker Loops, a vision of dancing Shakers, and Steve Reich's funky, Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet, a work commissioned by eighth blackbird. Finally, the stage is stuffed with musicians for a mesmerising and virtuosic early work by Philip Glass, Music in Similar Motion.

MSO Metropolis New Music Festival - On a Wire

Come aboard a wild ride through contemporary American orchestral music. Michael Gordon's collaboration with visionary film-maker Bill Morrison, Dystopia, is a frenzied, chaotic drive along Los Angeles' Highway 90. Jennifer Higdon's On a Wire is a colourful showpiece for eighth blackbird, while Unstuck jumbles together flashbacks and flash forwards as an orchestra tries to "unstick" itself. Aaron Jay Kernis' musica celestis provides the calm,beautiful eye of the storm. This concert will also include a new work commissioned as part of the MSO's Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program. This concert will be followed by a free late-night Fractured Jam with eighth blackbird in the stalls foyer of the Melbourne Recital Centre.

MSO Metropolis New Music Festival - Waves

Metropolis concludes with American seascapes. John Luther Adams' orchestral work Dark Waves summons the magnificent, otherworldly beauty of a vast, rolling sea at night. After this stunning nocturne, Steve Reich opens the curtains onto a vivid, bright ocean vista in his epic, joyous masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians. Layers of glittering pianos and percussion ebb and flow, humming with fresh energy. This concert will also include a new work commissioned as part of the MSO's Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program. This concert will be preceded by a free performance featuring eighth blackbird in Elisabeth Murdoch Hall to celebrate the centenary of John Cage.

MSO presents Beethoven Violin Concerto

Kolja Blacher is the complete musician, recognised around the world as a superb violinist and dynamic leader. In this concert, Blacher guides the orchestra through a musical journey encompassing the grace of Haydn's early symphony, the intensity of Shostakovich and the poetry of Beethoven's glorious Violin Concerto. HAYDN Symphony No.6 in D major (Le Matin) BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D major, Op.61 SHOSTAKOVICH Chamber Symphony Op 110a

MSO presents Chris Botti

Five-time Grammy nominee, trumpeter Chris Botti is one of America's highest-selling jazz instrumentalists, with four No.1 albums, three gold records and an unprecedented two platinum DVDs to his name. His cool, romantic blending of jazz and pop has cemented his position as one of the jazz world's most popular talents. Chris Botti with the MSO - sophisticated and seductive entertainment - is a must for any true romantic.

MSO presents Ears Wide Open 1

'I could not refuse my melancholy nature the satisfaction of composing an overture to a tragedy', Brahms wrote of his Tragic Overture. If you want to know more about this beautiful music, join conductor Richard Gill and the MSO for Ears Wide Open, an interactive 80 minute journey into music.

MSO presents Emperor Concerto

The culmination of a special three-year collaboration between the MSO and Finnish pianist, composer and conductor, Olli Mustonen, this concert is a showcase of Mustonen's prodigious musical intelligence and talent. BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.1 in C major, Op.15 MUSTONEN Piano Sonata Jehkin Iivana BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No.5 in Eb major, Op.73 (Emperor)

MSO presents Mendelssohn Octet

One of the great violinists of our time, Kolja Blacher takes on three peaks of the solo violin repertoire in the first half of this program: two of Bach's partitas, and Berio's Sequenza, which redefined the instrument's technical possibilities, while paying homage to Bach. Blacher then joins musicians from the MSO for one of the miracles of chamber music, Mendelssohn's glorious Octet, written when he was just 16.

MSO presents Shostakovich Quintet

The New York Times describes Bun-Ching Lam's music as 'alluringly exotic.' Her ...Like Water, featuring Robert Cossom on vibraphone, is the haunting centrepiece to this Chamber Series program. The first work is by William Kraft, for many years principal timpanist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The concert concludes with music of tremendous emotional power, Shostakovich's Piano Quintet of 1940.

MSO presents Wind Power

This exciting program of wind music spanning three centuries begins with the colourful bagatelles for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon by Hungarian György Ligeti. Following Mozart's masterly quintet and a journey to the baroque with Vivaldi, you'll hear Mládí, one of the astonishing fruits of the last years of Czech composer Leoš Janác?ek. He described this light-hearted work, written as he turned 70, as 'a kind of reminiscence of my youth.'

National Careers & Employment Expo

The National Careers & Employment Expo is Australia's largest careers and employment event bringing together organisations from the corporate world, government, industry sectors, education providers, non-profit groups all under one roof. The 2012 National Careers & Employment Expo is the event that provides the answers. - Full-Time and Part-Time Jobs on offer - Graduate, Apprentice and Trainee Opportunities - Employment and Training Seminars - Leading Organisations, Local and Interstate - Careers and Employment Stage - Education Institutions When you are thinking about your career - Be Seen. Be Professional. Be Employed.

Pipilotti Rist: I Packed the Postcard in My Suitcase

Lush and Edenic, sexy but sinless, the hedonistic pleasure worlds created by Pipilotti will delight, refresh and chillax you. Pipilotti's vivid video environments take you into a dream state of elements. Earth, wind, fire and water are alchemically activated in her mesmerising loops of trippy experience. This major exhibition devised especially by ACCA will be the first major survey of Pipilotti's works to be shown in Australia. Named a "guilty pleasure" by British critic Adrian Searle, Pipilotti Rist is one of this century's most sought after artists and has shown in major exhibitions, biennales and festivals around the world, including the Venice Biennale in 2005 where she represented Switzerland with the stunning installation Homo Sapiens Sapiens in the Church of St. Stae. Her works are epic and lush and often deal with issues related to gender, sexuality and the human body, but in a way that evokes a sense of unadulterated happiness and innocence.. Her ACCA exhibition, the first major presentation of her work in Australia, will bring together several key works from Rist's recent exhibiting history, as well as a new commission which will spread across ACCA's main exhibition hall with kaleidoscopic glee. "Pipilotti's works are visually sumptuous and organically overloaded with a playful fecundity. They are gorgeous, hypnotic and just a little addictive. Sexy is sinless and naughtiness is without wickedness in Rist's playful romps through the elements of earth, wind, water and fire. Dislodged from narrative but anchored in nature, Rist's works hold the viewer in a loop of experience and deliver a heightened awareness of sensuality."- Juliana Engberg

Pirate Sundays at Polly Woodside

X marks the spot at Polly Woodside on the first Sunday of each month. Dress as a pirate and head to Polly Woodside to search for illusive buried treasure, walk the plank, join in pirate arts and crafts and have your face painted! Activities include face painting, balloon making, treasure Hunts, story time, coits, furling and unfurling of the sails. *Summer Fun at Polly Woodside! Pirate Sunday every Sunday in January (excludes 1st Jan)*

The High Tea Party

The High Tea Party is a popular event inviting women to immerse themselves in a weekend of indulgence, pampering and style. Relaxing with a classic high tea of delightful sandwiches, delicate chocolates and cakes, scones with jam and cream, exquisite tea and a piccolo of sparkling wine. The event opens at 9am and runs until approximately 6pm. You are welcome to come all day if you choose and wander around the experience areas and boutique market stalls at your leisure. The only set part of the day is your high tea sitting and you can choose which sitting you would like at the time of booking your ticket. There is usually a morning, lunchtime and afternoon session to choose i.e. 10.30am, 12.30pm, 2.30pm and 4.30pm

The Wild Duck

Are there some truths it's better not to know? Winner of three Helpmann Awards (2011) and four Sydney Theatre Awards (2011), this taut, stripped-back rendition of a modern classic never lets up. Director Simon Stone has developed from a wunderkind of Melbourne's indie theatre to an established force on Australia's mainstages. Here he transplants Ibsen's characters into the contemporary world in a new play tailor-made for an astonishing cast led by Ewen Leslie. Hjalmar Ekdal grew up rich but scandal cast him into poverty. Now he lives in a tiny flat with his father, his wife, his daughter and a duck. When his old friend Gregers Werle returns with unfinished business, the truth Gregers brings could shatter the world Hjalmar has built around himself. A bittersweet portrait of family dysfunction, deception and denial, The Wild Duck resounds for a new age. A Belvoir Production. Written by Simon Stone with Chris Ryan after Henrik Ibsen.

Tribes

Around this family's table, conversation is a no-holds-barred struggle for attention. Opinions, arguments and insults are flung around with no consideration for the damage it might cause. And there's Billy, watching it all in silence, not hearing a word but getting the message. This sharp-jabbing UK hit comedy makes its Australian debut at the MTC Theatre, Sumner.