Festival Will Hit The Right Notes
In the lead up to The Yarraville Festival, Martin Zakharov, kindly took the time to share an insight into the numerous collection of hats he wears and there is a broad collection. The extensive heap includes: Maribyrnong City Councillor, professional musician, teacher, festival organiser and family man. During our catch up, Martin did touch on life as a professional musician and mentioned perfoming in ‘just a few bands’ but a google stalk later revealed so much more (evidence that this individual is definitely modest and down to earth.) He has performed and worked with numerous artists in Australia, Europe and North America. Some of the list includes: Powderfinger, the Temptations, Harry Belafonte, James Morrison, Vince Jones, Paul Grabowsky, the Wolfgang Lindner Orchestra, Relax with Max and the Konstanz Stadttheater.
How long have you been involved with The Yarraville Festival?
“I’ve been involved since 1996 and have worked in various roles. We really aim to reach as much of the community as possible and encourage everyone to come along. This is my 19th festival!”
Are you performing at The Yarraville Festival this year?
“I’m in a band doing live music to silent movies and this year we are doing a Charlie Chaplin movie.”
What do you love about Yarraville?
“The history of it as there are so many unusual quirks. The station wasn’t even there at first and then in about the late 1870’s the shops moved towards the station. We ended up with a really cool shopping strip just by luck.”
What are you looking forward to the most?
“There’s an international funk band which will be performing so I’m really looking forward to seeing them. Also there might be slam poetry which we are trying to organise, this is a kind of freeform poetry and is a bit like rapping without music.”
How have you seen the festival change over the years?
“It’s certainly growing bigger. We’ve experimented with holding it at different times of the year and had various amounts of success. One guy in music management tried to drift it towards a musical festival which was a good idea but this gradually attracted a pub crawl in the evening so we pulled back from that and made it more family oriented which is more appropriate for the demographic seem it’s family city around here. This year, we have made an effort to extend it through the week and have a number of events leading up to it such as a comedy night and fashion parade. The last couple of years we’ve had stacks of acoustic groups.”
How do you balance your time?
“With difficulty!”
