The art scene is exploding as spring is finally underway in Perth.

The busy season starts with an international flourish. On October 1st the Beijing Dance Academy will showcase Chinese ethnic dance traditions in a production called Inheritance. On the 5th New York’s Migiwa Miyajima will join the WA Youth Jazz Orchestra  fresh from working with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and appearing at the famous Birdland jazz club.

The WA Symphony Orchestra are flat out this month, beginning with two concerts with superstar cellist Gautier Capuçon. Capuçon will perform Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme on the 5/6th and on the 11/12/13th will give the world premiere (with Jean-Yves Thibaudet) of  Richard Dubugnon’s Eros athanatos, a Fantaisie concertante for cello and piano. On the 21st the WASO Chorus and strings will present three masses from Haydn, Mozart and Schumann conducted by Christopher van Tuinen. Music and art will collide on the 26th when Katie Noonan  returns with Australia’s ‘poet laureate’ Michael Leunig and her ARIA Award winning jazz trio Elixir for a collaboration spoken-word poetry, line drawing, vocals and jazz improvisations.

The remainder of the month the orchestra will be in the pit performing for the WA Opera’s Don Giovanni. The production runs 20-27th October and stars Teddy Tahu Rhodes in the title role.

There is more opera afoot this month, with Freeze Frame Opera presenting a night of Mozart hits at the Kidogo Arthouse on the 13th. Meanwhile on the 15th the WA Academy of Performing Arts vocal students will present Massenet’s Cinderella directed by Thomas de Mallet Burgess.

There are a multitude of performances this month at WAAPA as the semester reaches its zenith. Some highlights include Geoffrey Lancaster and Paul Wright demonstrating their time travel skills on the 27th in a concert of Mozart’s masterworks on period instruments, plus the third year acting students directed by Stefanos Rassios performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the 12-18th. The Sound Spectrum festival from the 8-12th will present 10 hours of world premieres from sound artists, composers and improvisers.

The new music scene this month will also include several concerts from Tura New Music. On the 2nd audio visual artist Robin Fox will present a live performance dance soundtracks from his latest release ‘A Small Prometheus’. On the 21st Erkki Veltheim, Rohan Drape and Alex Garsden (of Inland Concert Series) will perform a new fifteen-minute antiphonal work for instruments and computers. And from the 29-31st the PS Arts Space is hosting DHD, a visual-audio duo who combine sound art and design with cutting edge digital technologies to create immersive performances and playful visual audio installations. James Hullick and Jonathan Duckworth will present a concert and free play exhibition Disruptive Critters  on the 31st as the culmination of their residency.

New music is also front and centre at the Art Gallery of WA with Japaneses sound artist and musician Asuna installing 100 toy keyboards in the gallery concourse on the 23rd so they harmonise, cross-talk and beat in conversation with the gallery’s acoustics.

Musica Viva are in town on the 9th with arguably the world’s greatest string quartet, the Borodin Quartet. On the 16th Tasmania’s fabulous new Baroque ensemble Van Dieman’s Band visit UWA with a concert called La Danza. The Giovanni Consort present a concert of 20th century English choral music on the 26th. And lastly the Fremantle Chamber Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with guests Mark Coughlan, Rebecca Glorie and Louise McKay in Perth and Fremantle on the 27/28th.

In the world of THEATRE writer/performer Charlotte Otton’s no-frills look into the lives of four young women Let me finish opens on the 2nd at the Blue Room. Renegade Productions x Bow & Dagger present Finn O’Branagàin’s Medusa,  also at the Blue Room from the 16th. On the 30th theatre larrikins Lazy Yarns will open a new production called  Penthouse devised by Campbell Pollack and cast and promising to serve up a silver platter of high-octane greed, violence and masculinity.

Black Swan State Theatre’s fourth conversational ‘pairing’ as part of their 2018 program is aptly titled “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. Artistic director Clare Watson’s plunges headlong into female representation and pleasure with two works that challenge cultural paradigms and systemic misogyny, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek. In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (opens on the 24th) is set in the Victorian era amid the early history of psychotherapy when women’s feelings were often diagnosed as an illness and erotic pleasure was biologically attributed only to men. The musical Xenides  (opens 27th) was inspired by the story of Australia’s longest serving games show hostess Adrianna Xenides (Wheel of Fortune). The world premiere is a mix of hilarious and tender stories couched within a cabaret soundtrack performed live by electronic power-pop group The Twoks.

The Awesome Festival continues at the Perth Cultural Centre – for more details about this kids festival and other family-friendly arts events head to the Kids Gig Guide.