This winter, from the soaring St Peter's Church to the Bullarto bush hall, some of Australia’s finest musicians will be pouring out their souls in a series of performances called Winter Sounds.

“It was a long development period,” laughs Dave. “We run an event up in Echuca called the Riverboats Music Festival, which is a three day outdoor festival on the Murray and for years we’ve wanted to develop a sister event.”

The Riverboats Music Festival sells out every year and hosts artists like Paul Kelly, Neil Finn, Missy Higgins and the Cat Empire.

“My family have a place out at the back of Daylesford, it’s a beautiful old school we’re restoring at the moment and hoping to do some shows in eventually.”

Over the years, as Dave was coming back and forth from the region he says he was struck by an idea, “to create an event over the winter months that could bring some of these artists that we've worked with into some of the extraordinary spaces around Daylesford.”

“One of the really unique things about the region is that every bush track you go down, there's another abandoned church or school hall, or little village and I suppose as a music promoter, I'm sort of peering into these beautiful leadlight windows thinking, imagine if we did an intimate show with some of these acts that we've worked with.”

He began reaching out to people who managed these bucolic spaces in Glenlyon, Bullarto, Daylesford and Clunes. “At the Clunes town hall, I opened this door. And it's got this incredible painted backdrop like a Frederick McCubbin piece. And it's from the 1920’s or something!”

He says, “The great thing about it is how encouraging and supportive the community has been. A lot of these buildings are never used to their full capacity now, particularly the churches. We were in the Uniting Church last year, and that was built back in the gold rush for a congregation of 350 people, a local minister said they're lucky to get 10 a week to services now.”

"We're not just ring fencing a footy oval and bringing toilets to the staging and rolling out a traditional festival. We’re not using the word festival. It’s a series of one off performances in unique, extraordinary spaces, so a lot of these bands that do play in front of 1000s of people at festivals are like, ‘This is amazing. You're telling us we can go and perform in a bush hall you can only get to via an Art Deco train that we've charted?”

This year, Winter Sounds will be hosting intimate performances by Adalita in the Bullarto Village Hall, Jen Cloher at St Peter’s Church in Daylesford, Gareth Liddiard in the Bullarto Village Hall and Watty Thompson in the Clunes Town Hall, among others.

Dave runs me through his top picks, “I think Mo’Ju at the Daylesford Town Hall will be pretty extraordinary. They just performed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. And they will be supported by Coda Chroma, a Ballarat artist who was PBS’s artist of the week a couple of weeks ago."

Dave Frazer - Festival Director Winter Sounds wintersounds.com.au