Director Ian Scobie and Associate Director Annette Tripodi, unveil some of the logistics and highlights (including their favourites) in the program for WOMADelaide 2026

Murray Bramwell

It is three weeks out from opening night for WOMADelaide 2026 and Ian Scobie is quietly confident. “It’s always touch wood” – his familiar caveat. But he is noting the positives. “We got the crazy heatwave out of the way. And we don’t have huge travel logistical challenges. No cranes and feathers. It’s looking …

Adelaide Festival

Music

Preview Interview WOMADelaide 2025

Now one of Australia’s most durable outdoor festivals, WOMADelaide prepares for another four day event featuring music and performances that are, you might say, out of this World. Associate Director, Annette Tripodi talks about the line-up for 2025.

Written by Murray Bramwell

WOMADelaide, with its rather odd portmanteau name, has become a very familiar fixture in Botanic Park in the second weekend in March. This year will be its 28^th iteration and …

As WOMADelaide 2024 draws closer, Murray Bramwell talks to Director, Ian Scobie, about bringing in the new and keeping the familiar .

“Things are going pretty well. Touch wood” As always Ian Scobie is taking early soundings in late January. He has been involved with WOMADelaide for all of its 32 years. Right back to 1992 when APA was formed and Festival director, Rob Brookman negotiated with WOMAD UK’s Thomas Brooman to bring World Music artists to a weekend festival …

Murray Bramwell talks with Director Ian Scobie and Associate Director Annette Tripodi about the rapidly approaching WOMADelaide 2023

Annette Tripodi is not really pondering the idea that WOMADelaide is entering its fourth decade. She is just pleased the current one has landed in the net. “It’s worth saying that the last three years have been so peculiar in that we never knew what the next festival would hold…”

COVID-19 has cast a long shadow over all of the performing arts …

Director Ian Scobie and Associate Director, Annette Tripodi talk to Murray Bramwell about reclaiming and re-setting Adelaide’s favourite music event – despite the challenges of COVID-19.

WOMADelaide is turning thirty and what a year to have a milestone birthday. From its inception in 1992, when it formed part of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, this vibrant, richly diverse music event has captured this city and brought visitors and rusted-on fans from all over the country.

Based in the CBD in Botanic …

WOMADelaide 2021: Re-inventing for the Pandemic

Murray Bramwell talks with Artistic Director, Ian Scobie about the challenges of planning a music festival during COVID.

The last time I interviewed Ian Scobie about WOMADelaide it was late January last year and Kangaroo Island was burning down. The bushfires -which engulfed huge sections of the country, sending serious smoke haze into the cities – were on everyone’s mind. Scobie’s company APA was running a national tour for the Italian composer, Ludovico Einaudi, …

Director Ian Scobie talks with Murray Bramwell about Adelaide’s most enduring international music event.

This coming Friday, March 6, marks the opening of the four day WOMADelaide music festival. With its odd portmanteau name (WOMAD is an acronym for World of Music and Dance) the South Australian version of the UK festival, originally founded and promoted by Peter Gabriel, began as part of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival in 1992.

There have been 23 festivals since then – it became an …

Daily Review

Welcoming the World

As WOMADelaide prepares to open the gates of Botanic Park from March 9 -12, Murray Bramwell talks with Program Manager Annette Tripodi about the 2018 program.

March is a brilliantly mad month in Adelaide. It is when the city is captured by the Festival and Writers’ Week, the ever-expanding Fringe, the Clipsal 500 Supercar race, and WOMADelaide. Each event has its signatures, rituals and durable traditions – but that seems almost especially true of WOMAD.…

Daily Review

WOMADelaide Celebrates

Murray Bramwell talks with WOMADelaide director Ian Scobie about the music festival with a difference.

It is now 25 years since WOMADelaide, that strange acronym grafted on to the name of an Australian city, was first heard about. In 1992, as part of Rob Brookman’s Adelaide Festival, negotiations took place between Brookman, his colleague Ian Scobie, and Thomas Brooman, the director of the UK WOMAD (aka World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival. The idea was …