The new director of the Canberra International Music Festival knows about music in the broadest sense: Eugene Ughetti's father owned a music store, and the young boy would go there and listen to musos of every type talking about their instruments. Rock musicians rubbed shoulders with violinists.
"I would listen to the latest heavy-metal guitarist trying out the latest distortion pedals," Mr Ughetti said.
"Me, as a five-year-old, would listen to long-haired boys talking about the value of one effects pedal versus another."
That exposure and openness to all kinds of music produced a musician who is innovative and not bound by conventions. And that may be the way the Canberra festival unfolds under his direction.
He grew up at a particularly interesting time for music in Australia. Electronic music was taking off. The first Casio keyboards came out in 1981. "People were starting to have synthesizers at home," he said.
The result is a musician with the broadest tastes, extending way beyond the standard classical repertoire of European classics. That broadness of taste will inform the first festival he directs in 2025 (2024's will be the last directed by Roland Peelman).
The new baton talks of "art music" rather than of "classical music", indicating a much broader sense of what concert programs might become under his direction.
"Art music", he thinks, is not necessarily music to relax or fall asleep to. It is not music to comfort people but to push people, as he puts it. There will be new music, particularly new Australian music.
Which brings us - and, more importantly, him - to: how does he get bums on seats without just over-programing the old favourites?
He thinks the way to get people to listen to "challenging" works is to "sell the experience". He envisages imaginative stage design and pre-concert talks to take the music beyond the standard performance by a bunch of musicians on a stage where the audience just arrives, sits down, listens and leaves.
He wants to broaden the audience, particularly to get more young people involved.
He thinks politics might be relevant. A work might resonate with concerns about the environment, for example. He cites "climate change" or "colonisation" as likely resonances with some works.
"If there is a strong idea which is presented with integrity, which is rich in what it has to offer, I believe people will come," he said.
Planning for the 2025 festival started pretty well the week he arrived. He thinks Canberra has a strong tradition of choirs so one of his priorities is to look at the resources available and to work out how to bring them together. Massed choirs in big works seems likely.
He is a percussionist, and he got that from his dad, the drummer in Melbourne (a drummer, by the way, who once backed Olivia Newton-John).
He is the founder director of Speak Percussion. Its website says: "Eugene is known for tackling complex and ambitious art music projects whether as director, composer, performer or conductor".
That seems likely to be the way forward for the Canberra International Music Festival.
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