Victorian Seniors Festival 2022 online now before October celebration

This year's theme is Takin' it easy and it's all about encouraging people to enjoy the festival their way by getting back out there and attending local events or tuning in to online performances from home.

Community voices, music and locally-produced radio plays feature in the online content you can access now.

Two new radio plays, Marvellous and Salt, explore the relationships between mothers and daughters through stories, secrets, memories and recipes.

Marvellous looks at the everyday lives and extravagant, sometimes fantastical, inner lives of two nonagenarian women and their 60-plus daughters.

It interweaves the voices of the mothers and daughters: their connectedness, their failing/falling bodies, their wayward memories and inventions.

Click HERE to listen.

Salt is a special radio adaptation of a successful stage play from the 1990s.

When gourmet Meg and the world's worse cook Lauren find themselves sharing a kitchen, their battles are over more than bench space. Kitchen lore, toxicology, family recipes and five enigmatic ingredients infuse in this exploration of the relationship between mother and daughter as the secrets, hopes, fears and losses of a lifetime are spilled once and for all.

Click HERE to listen.

Ian Braybrook from Radio 88fm interviews some of Australia's finest musicians.

First up is Phil Golotta from the Blue Echoes, one of the longest-surviving music groups in Australia.

The group mixed pop standards with rock'n'roll hit covers, their own material and comedy, touring clubs and pubs around the country for 21 years.

A talented songwriter, Phil penned Jamie Redfern's massive 1973 hit Hitch a Ride on a Smile.

At 83, he continues to entertain, mostly in aged care homes.

Click HERE to hear the interview.

Nola Lauch, Pete Dawson, Tony Byrne and Jarrod Dexter, from the band Jagany, present five original compositions written by Nola and Pete.

In between songs, Nola speaks about the musical connection to her Aboriginal culture and the meaning and stories behind her very personal songs.

Nola is a Kirrae-wurrung/Bundjalung woman who received a regional NAIDOC Artist of the Year award in 2017 in recognition of her songwriting and live performances.

Click HERE to listen.

Composer, performer, instrument builder and radio producer Warren Burt selects pieces from different decades which also deal with different kinds of music he has written over the years.

While he mostly writes for electronic instruments, he also writes for voices, acoustic instruments, boat horns and environmental sounds.

He has written 600-700 pieces and for several years worked at 3CR.

Click HERE to listen.

The life stories and contributions of older Victorians are celebrated through the Recognising Senior Victorians program, sharing the stories of people living in residential care.

Those featured at the moment include Margaret Smith, Jean Whitelock, Jack Eaton, Irene Macwhirter, Guenter Eck, Glad Williamson, Dawn Parish, Dawn Clark, Charles Humphry and Alan Whatman.

Take a look HERE

The Conversations with the Commissioner series also continues with interviews featuring those recognised by the Victorian Senior of the Year awards. More HERE.

Want to find out more? Take a look at the festival website HERE.