Richard Mills finishes up thirteen years at the helm of Victorian Opera at the end of this year, and his opera Galileo gets its concert premiere as a kind of farewell. He’s got plenty to look back on and to look forward to as well as opera in Australia and worldwide goes through a kind of sea change.

And we look back at some of The Music Show’s favourite live sessions from the year with jazz piano, classical chamber music, monk punk and a vacuum cleaner plugged into a clarinet. Not to mention the banjos – multiple banjos. Music from Throat Pleats, Party Dozen, Buddhadatta and Shogo Yoshii, Mike Nock, members of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck.