New director for Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival has appointed Lieven Bertels as the new director for Sydney Festival from 2013 to 2015.

Lieven Bertels is currently artistic coordinator for Holland Festival, the Netherlands’ oldest and largest annual arts festival. Bertels helped to re-establish the event as a leading presenter and producer of contemporary music, opera and non-western work.

Over the last seven years, Bertels has extended the Holland Festival program to include popular music and visual arts; presented large-scale events aimed specifically at broadening the festival audience to embrace the Netherlands’ growing ethnic communities; and delivered a 35% increase in turnover.

While at the Holland Festival, Bertels has worked with artists such as Mike Patton (Faith No More), Heiner Goebbels, John Baldessari, Pierre Boulez, Ryuichi Sakamoto and the Manganiyars.

“I’ve always been attracted to the unique mix of arts and entertainment that Sydney Festival offers. My mission is to bring the best and the boldest projects to Sydney’s streets and stages and I’m grateful for this wonderful opportunity to add exciting new pages to the Festival’s rich history,” said Bertels. My family and I are thrilled to be moving to Sydney and I’m very much looking forward to working with the Festival team.”

Born in Belgium, Bertels studied musicology in Belgium and Composition in the United Kingdom. Prior to the Holland Festival, he was artistic director of Concertgebouw Brugge, an arts centre presenting a broad range of art forms, including, during Bertels’ tenure, resident artists the Philharmonia London, violinist Viktoria Mullova, London Sinfonietta, Vladimir Ashkenazy, the DJ Eavesdropper and VJ Collective Visual Kitchen, alongside a selection of contemporary music, dance and theatre such as Bobby McFerrin, Sasha Waltz, Herbie Hancock and Tim Etchells. Bertels’ earlier career includes work as a producer at Belgian National Cultural Radio Klara (focusing on jazz and youth audiences); Head of the Audio Department at the Brussels Film, Radio and TV School; and producing for record and radio companies including Decca, BMG Classics, Megadisc and BBC Scotland.

Bertels will move to Sydney in late 2011 to begin work on programming the 2013 Sydney Festival. The 2012 Festival will be the last of three festivals directed by Lindy Hume.