This winter, Jolted Arts Space is pulling out all the stops with a season so rich it almost makes the cold worthwhile.
From African percussion and kora to art-body hybrids and stripped-back folk, Jolted Arts Space in Northcote is serving up a genuinely diverse lineup of live music, performance art and cultural storytelling across June, July and August.
Here’s everything you need to know.
JOLT Arts Winter Season 2026
- Where: JOLTED Arts Space (342 High Street, Northcote)
- When: June – August 2026
- Tickets: Via individual event links
Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
JOLT African Sunset Residency
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- 20 June: Melbourne African Traditional Ensemble: $20/$15, doors 7pm
- 18 July: Willis Chimano, Heavy Is the Crown: A One Man Show: $20/$15, doors 7pm
- 8 August: Grace Barbé Akoustik Duo featuring James Ross: $20/$15, doors 7pm
- 19 September: VaRuRu Mbira Trio
- 3 October: The Mande Spirit
- 10 October: Melbourne Africubismo Project
- All events at Jolted Arts Space, 342 High Street, Northcote.
Kicking things off on 20 June is the Melbourne African Traditional Ensemble, better known as MATE, a cross-cultural collaboration weaving together the Kamalengoni (a West African hunter’s harp), mbira and African percussion with Yidaki (didgeridoo) in what promises to be a genuinely rare musical conversation between the traditions of the African continent and Australia’s First Peoples.
Masterful artists Valanga Khoza and Aboubacar Djelike Kouyate bring deep musical lineages to the stage, joined by Jason Tamiru on Yidaki to complete one of the more unusual and compelling instrumental combinations you’re likely to encounter this winter.
But MATE is just the opening chapter.
Running from June through to October, the JOLT African Sunset Residency, curated by Stani Goma, is an intimate series bringing some of Naarm’s most compelling African and diasporic artists into a warm, communal setting.
Inspired by the tradition of sunset gatherings where communities come together to share music, stories and rhythm, the residency draws that sense of collective warmth into the middle of Melbourne winter.
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On 18 July, internationally acclaimed Kenyan artist Willis Chimano, a member of Africa’s widely celebrated group Sauti Sol, brings Heavy Is the Crown: A One Man Show to the stage. Blending live music with deeply personal storytelling, Chimano takes audiences through his experience as a queer African artist navigating identity, visibility and survival.
It’s an unflinching piece of truth-telling that moves from fear and isolation through to healing and joy.
Grace Barbé Akoustik Duo featuring James Ross follows on 8 August. ARIA-nominated and multi-award-winning, Grace Barbé hails from the Seychelles, and her music fuses Afro-Kreol traditions with reggae, afrobeat, psychedelic rock and groove-driven improvisation.
For this duo performance, she strips things right back alongside guitarist James Ross (also of The Cat Empire), letting voice, rhythm and island stories do the heavy lifting.
The residency continues through September and October with VaRuRu Mbira Trio on 19 September, The Mande Spirit on 3 October, and the Melbourne Africubismo Project wrapping things up on 10 October.
Made Now Music: Meredith + Hayley
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- Date: 5 July
- Doors: 3:30pm
- Tickets: $15/$10
- Venue: Jolted Arts Space, 342 High Street, Northcote
On 5 July, Made Now Music brings a double album launch to Jolted Arts Space that’s about as far from a standard launch party as you can get.
Hayley Chan and Meredith Beardmore are celebrating two very different but equally curious records: Chan’s Desert Meditations, performed live as a solo percussion set, and Beardmore’s The Long Blue Horizon, a record built from historical wooden flutes and field recordings captured across the Tasman Peninsula.
Beardmore will be joined by Ryan Williams on recorders and Timothy Franklin on guitar, giving the pieces a live dimension that should feel genuinely exploratory. Chan is a Warrane/Sydney-based performer and improviser whose post-genre approach cuts across jazz, hip-hop, experimental and industrial music; Beardmore plays historical instruments in new sonic contexts.
This one’s for anyone who likes their music concerts to feel more like a discovery than a tick-off-the-setlist affair.
Antipodean Apparatus: Stelarc /// Hullick /// The Amplified Elephants
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- Date: 9 July
- Doors: 7:30pm
- Stelarc: 8:00–8:40pm
- The Amplified Elephants: 9:00–9:30pm
- Hullick: 9:30–10:00pm
- Venue: Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
Right, this one’s a bit different.
On 9 July, and notably not at Jolted Arts Space but at the Utzon Room at Sydney Opera House, JOLT Arts presents one of the stranger and more thrilling nights on the calendar.
Cyprus-born Australian artist Stelarc has spent decades using his own body as an artistic medium in ways that range from the confronting to the genuinely mind-bending. For Antipodean Apparatus, he’ll be presenting wearable sound-triggering machines, including an exoskeleton built in collaboration with Ben Merrylees and James Hullick.
Alongside Stelarc, Hullick brings his own robotic sound machines, reimagined violins that feel like they’ve arrived from some parallel industrial revolution, and neurodiverse ensemble The Amplified Elephants round out a program that blurs the line between performance art and avant-garde sound in the best possible way.
Sensible Serenades
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- Date: 24 July
- Doors: 8pm
- Tickets: $25
- Venue: Jolted Arts Space, 342 High Street, Northcote
Back in Northcote, Sensible Serenades returns to Jolted Arts Space on 24 July after a sold-out debut, and this instalment brings together three of Melbourne’s more interesting emerging voices for a night of close-up, stripped-back performance.
Headlining is Rhys Thompson, an alt-country and folk artist from Naarm whose songwriting sits somewhere between raw personal storytelling and warm Americana.
Joining him is Maxon, an award-winning singer-songwriter whose debut album Talking With Strangers, out in April 2026, moves across folk-rock, modern pop and deeply personal territory around heartbreak and healing.
Rounding out the bill is Leo Ercole, a Mornington Peninsula singer-songwriter who’s already shared stages with the likes of Boy and Bear and Pete Murray. It’s a strictly limited-capacity night at Jolt, and with the debut selling out, moving quickly on tickets seems like the sensible move.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Jolted Arts Space.
