Festival Ensembles
Pack your instrument, bring your voice or come ready to dance. Festival Ensembles are a chance to settle into a group, learn alongside Festival artists and spend part of each day making music or dancing together. By the end of the weekend, you could be sharing the stage with the artists you’ve come to hear, playing for a room full of dancers or taking to the streets in the Festival Parade.
That’s the spirit of our 2027 theme, Participation – Making Culture Together. Folk traditions are sustained by people sharing what they know and bringing their own ideas and expression to it. Ensembles give us time to do that across generations, cultures and experience levels, with a shared performance to work towards and plenty to take home afterwards.
Be Part of the Festival
Sing.
Dance.
Play.
How does it work?
You don’t need to arrive with a band or know anyone beforehand. Choose an ensemble that interests you, and you’ll meet with the same group across several days of workshops and rehearsals. Each day builds on the last: you get to know the tunes or moves, find your place in the group and get to know the folks beside you.
There’s time to ask questions, try things out and enjoy hearing or feeling it all come together. Depending on the ensemble, you might learn tunes by ear, explore harmonies, work from written parts, develop arrangements or get new dance steps into your feet. Your leaders guide the process, and you'll learn from one another along the way too.
This year, we’re opening a second ensemble venue and offering nearly twice as many ensembles. There are groups for rhythm, dance, voices and instruments, with opportunities to join concerts, the Festival Parade, the Farewell Concert and the Farewell Dance. Your rehearsals become a familiar meeting point within a Festival full of other things to explore, and you’ll start recognising your ensemble mates at concerts, in sessions and around the Festival site.
Who is it for?
Some groups welcome complete beginners; others suit people with more experience. Have a look through the descriptions below to find your fit, see what to bring and check the rehearsal and performance commitments. Plan to come along for the full journey so you and your group can build it together.
The Festival Ensembles run on site as part of the National Folk Festival program across 25-29 March 2027 so you’ll need a Festival season pass to register. See our FAQs below for more info.
If you’d like to start that journey a little earlier, the National Folk School runs from 23–25 March 2027 at the ANU School of Music. Spend three days exploring a teaching stream, then head into the Festival with new skills, ideas and people to play or dance with.
You’re welcome to join a Festival Ensemble whether or not you attend the Folk School; the two programs have separate bookings.
Find your group.
Bring your curiosity.
2027 FESTIVAL ENSEMBLES
Rhythm Ensemble - Greg Sheehan
Spend four days inside the rhythmic world of one of Australia’s great percussion innovators. Greg Sheehan has spent more than 50 years performing, teaching and developing an approach to rhythm that brings complex ideas to life through play, movement and sound.
For musicians, dancers and anyone curious about rhythm, this ensemble offers ways in through your hands, body and voice. Explore body percussion, handclapping, singing and Greg’s Rhythm Diamonds system, learning how patterns connect and how different parts combine into a group groove.
The ensemble builds towards a massed rhythmic gathering before the Farewell Concert. Come and help give the Festival’s final afternoon its pulse.
Festival Choir - One More Chorus
Everyone has a voice, and everyone can sing. That’s the starting point for One More Chorus, the community choir founded in 2018 by sisters Maggie and Elsie Rigby of The Maes.
For confident choristers through to folks who usually keep their singing to themselves, the Festival Choir is an invitation to add your voice. One More Chorus brings people together through contemporary songs from Australia and around the world.
Across four days, sing with Maggie and Elsie, learning songs and harmonies and returning each day to hear them take shape in a roomful of voices. The choir culminates in the Farewell Concert, with participants helping sing the Festival home.
Community Music Ensemble - Junkadelic
Street brass meets junk percussion in WA’s Junkadelic Brass Band. Horns drive a percussion battery made from recycled household and industrial materials, bringing New Orleans parade rhythms together with street jazz, funk and hip-hop.
For brass and wind players, alongside percussionists, and folks keen to try making music with a street band, this ensemble offers an entry point through rhythm and groove. Explore body percussion, syncopated patterns, simple polyrhythms and call-and-response alongside Junkadelic’s horn and drum sections.
Across the Festival, the ensemble will prepare for the Festival Parade. Come and become part of the band that people hear coming and then want to follow.
Indonesian Dance - Gamelan DanAnda
Learn Balinese dance with live gamelan accompaniment, guided by Melbourne’s Gamelan DanAnda. Their work draws on the sanggar tradition: an arts community where music and dance are learned, rehearsed and performed together, with knowledge shared across generations and experience levels.
For people curious about Balinese dance and the connection between movement and music, the ensemble offers time to learn alongside live musicians. Gamelan DanAnda brings dance into conversation with the shimmering cascades and intricate rhythms of Gong Kebyar.
Meet across Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then bring the piece to the Sunday Dance Party in the Piazza, taking your place in a tradition of learning through participation.
Festival Contra Dance - Adina Gordon
Vermont caller Adina Gordon facilitates “joy and minor chaos” wherever she goes. With more than 20 years of experience calling contra, squares and English country dance across North America, she particularly enjoys winning over dancers who weren’t sure it was for them.
For newcomers to social dancing as well as returning contra, bush and folk dancers, this is a chance to spend several days learning and dancing together. Contra is danced in long lines, progressing through figures and meeting other dancers as you move. Adina’s clear, playful calling guides the action, with inclusive, non-gendered language and a live band providing the music.
Join her across the Festival, then take to the floor for the Farewell Dance alongside the National Folk Festival Contra Band.
Festival Contra Band - Canberra Contra Club
The dancers need a band! Experienced Canberra Contra Club musicians will form the core of a bigger Festival ensemble, inviting players to learn tunes, develop arrangements and discover what makes music work for dancing.
For instrumentalists interested in folk tunes and playing for dancers, the band explores North American contra traditions, with repertoire spanning the Appalachians, New England and Québec. Work with the Canberra Contra Club musicians to discover how rhythm and phrasing support the figures being danced.
The ensemble plays for the Farewell Dance, alongside Adina Gordon and the Contra Dance Ensemble. Join the band and experience the exchange between musicians and dancers that keeps a contra floor moving.
Festival Strings - San Miguel Fraser
María San Miguel and Galen Fraser bring ancient songs, original tunes and lively fiddle arrangements to a collaboration rooted in Castilian and Celtic traditions. María’s fiddle, voice and pandereta draw on the music of Castile; Galen, a composer and fiddler, brings American and Scottish influences.
For string players interested in exploring folk repertoire with María and Galen, Festival Strings takes that meeting of musical worlds into a massed ensemble. Across four days, you’ll explore old melodies and new compositions with the duo, learning repertoire and developing it together for the Farewell Concert.
Join them to get inside the music they play, hear how its different traditions connect, and become part of the string sound that carries it onto the Festival stage.
Festival Ukes - Ukastle Ukestra
“So much more than a ukulele hum ’n’ strum”: that’s Mark Jackson and Jane Jelbart’s approach to Festival Ukes. Their five weekly Newcastle Ukestras have brought people together since 2009, combining musical learning with arrangements that make room for different ages, abilities and interests.
For ukulele players and singers, Festival Ukes offers both a hearty strum-along and more involved instrumental parts; other instruments are welcome too. Across four mornings, contemporary songs introduce riffs and rhythms, Tin Pan Alley brings jazzier feels, and traditional blues opens up history and musical ideas. There are much-loved bangers for a good sing, too.
Bring your uke—or another instrument—and discover how much music a Ukestra can make.
Festival Flutes - Mélisande
Explore the traditional music of Québec with Alex de Grosbois-Garand from Mélisande. The band’s repertoire draws on folklorists’ collections, archives and songs gathered from elders along Québec’s Richelieu River.
For all types of flute players, this ensemble offers a way to explore traditional techniques with Alex. Mélisande’s électrotrad sound brings traditional songs together with flute, fiddle, jaw harp, foot percussion and electronic beats. Across the Festival, you’ll learn tunes together before joining the band in concert.
Come and learn the music then help bring it to life on stage where Québécois tradition meets the band’s contemporary sound.
Guitar Ensemble - Guanaco Trío
Join Chilean guitarist Benjamín Aedo to explore the folk music of Argentina. Guanaco Trío formed in Buenos Aires, where Benjamín, Owen Salomé and Laura Urteaga-Serra met while studying Argentine music.
For all types of guitarists, this is an opportunity to explore music and instrumental skills with Benjamín. The trio’s repertoire focuses on northern Argentina, combining traditional pieces and new compositions. Guitar sits among violin, bandoneón, bombo legüero, Andean flutes and voice, with the instruments weaving together in counterpoint.
Across Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Guitar Ensemble will explore the rhythms, repertoire and musical language behind that sound. The sessions culminate in participants joining Guanaco Trío on stage in concert.
Restrung - Mickey & Michelle
Restrung turns the National into an orchestra. Mickey & Michelle bring Festival artists together with a string ensemble drawn from the Festival community, reimagining original songs through orchestral arrangements.
For orchestrally inclined string players, Restrung offers a sustained collaboration with Mickey & Michelle with daily rehearsals to prepare a concert with featured Australian and international performers. The arrangements are created especially for this Festival, bringing the guests’ music into the sound of a full string orchestra.
Take your place among the players, work through the music with Mickey & Michelle, and share the stage with the artists whose songs you’ve helped transform. The Restrung concert in the Budawang brings the whole collaboration together.
Teeny Tiny Choir - Teeny Tiny Stevies
Sisters Byll and Beth began writing children’s songs in 2015 when Byll needed help teaching her three-year-old about toilet training. What started alongside their indie-folk band The Little Stevies became Teeny Tiny Stevies: songs about the big and small challenges of childhood, played live for children and grown-ups together.
At the National, they headline our family and youth program with concerts and a special Family Storytime show. Children can also join the Teeny Tiny Choir, learning and rehearsing songs with the sisters across four days before performing in the Farewell Concert. For families who already sing these songs at home, here’s a chance to hear them live, and for children to sing with the people who wrote them.
Youth Circus Ensemble - Warehouse Circus
Canberra’s Warehouse Circus teaches through a cooperative approach to training and exploration, with pathways from first classes to performance and professional circus careers. Its artists have gone on to work with companies including Cirque du Soleil, Circus Oz, Circa and Gravity & Other Myths.
Their new show, Bound, brings acrobatics, aerials, juggling and balance together to explore the leaps we take and the ties that bind. Watch these fantastic young performers, then try circus skills in daily workshops. The Youth Circus Ensemble offers young participants four days of learning alongside the artists, with time to practise beyond a single workshop. Look out for Warehouse Circus in street performances and parades.
Youth Dance Ensemble - Summer McCall
Summer McCall first called dances at Alasdair Fraser’s Sierra Fiddle Camp in 2012, while still in her early teens. Her background spans ballet, modern, Irish and Scottish step dancing and tap; she now leads Scottish ceilidhs at festivals and camps across North America, Europe and the UK.
Her Youth Dance Ensemble invites teens and tweens to explore how a ceilidh works, from learning the dances to calling figures, teaching others and working with musicians. Rehearsals run Friday–Sunday, leading to a family ceilidh on Monday that the young participants help organise and lead. Families can join in at the dance on the day and follow instructions from their young folks.