Dingo Festival
Bangalow, NSW
8–11 Oct 26

Four days of jazz, dance, DJs, art and food across the halls, showgrounds, record stores and back rooms of Bangalow, Northern NSW.

Benjamin Walsh is one of Australia's most innovative musicians — a drummer, percussionist, composer, sound designer, studio engineer and filmmaker based between Melbourne and Tasmania. After forming a New Orleans-style brass ensemble in 2006 and later the large-scale Orkestra Of The Underground, Walsh scaled down to form his first quartet, finding that a smaller ensemble unlocked a new kind of compositional freedom.

The Benjamin Walsh Quartet blends funk, Afrobeat, cumbia, Peruvian chicha, Romanian strings and bebop horns into something that sounds like Mingus, Monk and Miles filtered through a deeply personal Australian lens. Their music has been released on Japanese label Hydrofunk Japan and earned them a cult following among fans of jazz, world music and cinematic soul.

Walsh has also produced and directed his own feature film and won the Best Of award at the Byron Underground Film Festival. His quartet — featuring saxophonist Matt Ottignon, trumpeter Peter Hunt and Walsh himself on drums, bass and guitar — is a live proposition unlike anything else.