DOORS 1PM // KITCHEN OPENS 1PM // SHOW STARTS 2PM

Estudiantian of Melbourne Album Launch - Ta Nisia

The ensemble Estudiantina of Melbourne returns with their highly anticipated second album, Ta Nisia (The Islands). 

Brunswick Ballroom Sunday 15th March 

Beyond simply evoking images of sun-drenched Aegean landscapes, the title signals a significant evolution in the group’s musical journey—one that honours their roots while charting new artistic horizons.

Ta Nisia serves as both literal and metaphorical terrain. On one level, “the islands” conjure the idyllic Greek isles—blue seas, white houses, salty air—reflecting the band’s deep connection to Greek-derived musical traditions. On another level, the album represents an archipelago of ideas: each track is an island unto itself, yet together they map a broader voyage of growth, exploration and connection. From their debut, Journey to Rebetika, Estudiantina of Melbourne embraced the rich heritage of Smyrneika and rebetiko. With Ta Nisia, the ensemble broadens that foundation. Instrumentation remains rooted—bouzouki, oud, qanun, accordion, violin—but there’s an added dimension: subtle stylistic shifts and a willingness to drift into less chartered musical waters. This album marks the next chapter: a maturing sound, deeper storytelling, and a confident embrace of what lies beyond tradition. Ta Nisia offers something richly immersive. The idiom of islands becomes a vessel: for memory, migration, identity and renewal. 

Event partners Brunswick Ballroom, ANT Pacific, Greek Herald , Hellenic Museum and Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne

XYLOURIDES return to Australia in 2026 and will perform at the Brunswick Ballroom on March 15th as part of the Brunswick Music Festival as well as WOMADelaide.

Xylourides are the youth brigade of Cretan Folk. Descendant of Cretan legends Nikos Xylouris, Psarantonis, Psaragiorgis and hailing from the epicentre of the movement in Anogeia in the mountains of Crete. Xylourides is Adonis, Nikos and Apollonia Xylouris. Young trailblazers of an ancient art form, steeped in rigid discipline and carried down generations. Xylourides are not just caretakers of Cretan folk music, they are perhaps its finest working exponents. As they have matured from the children of legends and students of the craft, Nikos, Adonis and Apollonia have made it their own, infusing the modes and patterns of their father and grandfather with a hyper energy and youthful enthusiasm that is infectious and powerful, whilst also baring all the hallmarks of the strict traditions imparted by the wisdom of the elders. The virtuosity of Nikos’ lyra, a fiddle-like instrument bowed but played with fingernails with blistering speed and frenzy plays counterpoint to Adonis’ lauto; a Cretan lute that requires farmers hands to wrench notes from its four strings that rhythmically propels and erupts into bursts of melody, all backed by the rhythmical pulse of Apollonia’s percussion. All three sing. On Crete these performances can last 12 hours, long through the night and into the morning light as mountain spirits take hold and the hypnotic circular rapture of the Cretan dances erode time like a fever dream. Arm in arm the congregation rotate before makeshift stages that Xylourides occupy like a throne. This music in Greece is singular. Everyone knows it and loves it like pop music never existed. Australian Greeks know and love Cretan Folk also and Xylourides immediately sold out all their shows in Melbourne in 2024 and in early 2025 and closed the Antipodes Festival to a packed Lonsdale Street two years in a row where thousands circled the asphalt of an intersection in place of the ancient stone of a village square.