The Tea Party To Bring The Fire & Wind To Australia This February
Iconic Canadian band The Tea Party are heading back to Australia in February 2026, bringing a unique live experience to our shores with the Elements Tour. Performing five shows in Australia, The Tea Party explore a new Live musical theme around Elements, with Symphony shows in Melbourne and Sydney aligned to wind, and Rock shows in Thirroul, Brisbane and Adelaide aligned to fire. In both formats The Tea Party will be playing a set that features their greatest hits.
The ‘Fire’ shows will feature the three-piece tour de force fans are very familiar with, while the wind show will bring a new dynamic to the live shows with The Tea Party accompanied by fifty-piece Orchestras. Conducted by Sarah-Grace Williams, Hamer Hall in Melbourne will play host to The Tea Party with Orchestra Victoria, while the iconic Opera House in Sydney will feature a performance with The Metropolitan Orchestra, and will be the band’s first time performing in the renowned venue. Jeff Martin talks to Hi Fi Way about this tour.
This is definitely shaping up to be one of the most exciting tour’s coming up for The Tea Party?
Challenging. It’s very challenging. You know, it’s the best of both worlds when it comes to The Tea Party. It’s not our first rodeo as far as playing with orchestras, but in saying that, to play one of the seven architectural wonders of the world and sell it out with the Sydney Symphony is a pretty big deal after thirty-five years.
Is playing the Sydney Opera House almost like the pinnacle in your career?
Yeah, I first arrived here, first Tea Party tour, I was twenty-three years old. Got off the plane. And our representative from Frontier took us on a little sightseeing tour. I got to see the Opera House in all its glory. I remember thinking as a twenty-three year‑old, wow, wouldn’t it be incredible someday to play there, right? And thirty-five years later, here we are!
Even Hamer Hall in Melbourne’s significant as well.
Hamer Hall is pretty much the home of classical music in Australia, and truth be told, even though I’m supposed to be like a Dark Lord of Canadian rock, my mornings… I only listen to ABC Classical up until about two o’clock in the afternoon, and then I’ll shift to listening to some world music, doing research and whatnot. But, classical music is such a big part of my life, so it’s an honour to play Hamer Hall again because we’ve done it once before.
The challenge is going to from one headspace, which is, with an orchestra, you must be very, very disciplined. The three of us, as a band, we need to be extremely on our game and not deviate from the path, as opposed to when we do our rock shows, just the three of us, well, there’s a lot of deviation that goes on.
Is this probably one of the most ambitious undertakings combining electric and symphony in the space of two weeks?
Yes it is. Jeff Burrows arrived here a week ago, and Stuart has arrived now. So, I live up here on the Sunshine Coast, so they’re both staying very close by to my home, and so we’re going to be in rehearsals for three days, just the three of us, but it’s mostly looking at the scores for the orchestra, and making sure that our ins and outs are timed perfectly because what they have in front of them, we have to stick to. It’s like a chemical marriage between the band and the orchestra. Then with the Tea Party rock shows, well, we’ve just come off a very, very successful tour in Canada. We were headlining arenas across the country, so the Tea Party rock machine is well‑oiled, but it’s more or less just concentrating on rehearsing for the orchestras.
Does that create a level of pressure for these show, knowing that the members in these orchestras are elite musicians and right at the top of their caper, so to speak?
It’s not pressure, it’s comfort. Knowing the level of musicianship that is going to be behind us or with us. Not behind us, with us. Once we know, once we get it in our heads and the muscle memory is there, like I said, the ins and the outs of each song. It’s actually when it all comes together where it’s comfortable on stage. The rehearsals leading up, even with the orchestra… we’ll have two full days of rehearsals before each orchestra show, with the Melbourne Symphony and with the Sydney Symphony. But after the second rehearsal, the jitters are gone, and everyone’s comfortable and from my experience in the past with orchestras, the shows have been very seamless.
How important was picking the right conductor for both those symphony shows?
Oh, she is amazing. She’s quite an icon in the classical world here in Australia, and yeah, Sarah’s definitely putting us — well, making us — jump hoops, but she’s a perfectionist. And myself being one as well, I very much appreciate her tenacity, and it’s going to go a long way.
Was there something particular about the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra that made you think, yep, these are the ones we want to go with this time around?
Well, actually, it was Stuart’s call, because Stuart Chatwood, our bassist, our keyboardist — his other job is composing music for gaming. Like Prince of Persia, things like that. And so, he’s worked with orchestras, and even his music for said games was performed here in Australia. He had his finger on the pulse as far as what orchestras he thought would work best with the Tea Party for these two cities. So, I let him be in charge of that, he’s done an amazing job, and he’s been really the focal point with the conductor, the two of them just making sure that everything’s going to be absolutely perfect.
With such an expansive catalogue of songs to choose from now, does some of the later material translate easily to being rearranged for an orchestra, or is that a pretty complicated process?
It’s a complicated process, and the last few outings of the Tea Party, the last two Eps, they were more like straight‑ahead rock music, so they didn’t really lend themselves to an orchestra situation. Whereas songs that I produced from Interzone, or Triptych, or Transmission, Edge of Twilight, those productions I made back then were big soundscapes, so those are the songs from those records that really lend themselves to an orchestra.
You have to, like — pardon the pun — take a page out of Zeppelin. You know, Jimmy Page, when he produced Zeppelin, there were a lot of guitar overdubs, especially on the later records like Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy, Graffiti. But when you went to see Zeppelin live, if you were lucky enough to see them in the 70s, there were no extra musicians, no backing tapes, it was just the four of them on stage, three instrumentalists, just distilling their own music. And pretty much that’s what The Tea Party does when we’re in the rock band format. But with an orchestra, all of those different guitar layers that I added, or keyboard layers that Stuart added, and things like that, they can all be replicated by the string section, the woodwind section, the brass section. So it’s an amazing thing to hear it like that. It’s like playing in a dream.
How do you think you’ll find switching gears and going from the symphony back to the electric shows? Is that a little bit more relaxed?
I think it will, but there’ll be a sense of accomplishments, especially with both shows, with Hamer Hall and with the Opera House, there will be a sigh of relief, but accomplishments after the old shows are done. The rock shows are kind of like, well, now let’s go out and have some fun. Even though the orchestra’s going to be fun, but it’s like I said, it’s a lot of mental energy that you’re expending on stage, where it’s like with our Tea Party rock shows, the three of us have known each other for such a long time that we don’t have to think about the rock shows.
Are the set lists for both quite distinctly different?
They are, because we did all the capital cities back in June last year, but it was sort of like a greatest hits kind of tour that we did with the rock show. What we want to do for our very, very dedicated audience this time around is go pretty deep, like some deep cuts that we haven’t played live in a decade, maybe even more. So there’ll be definitely three or four additions to our set list that will be a surprise to people. I mean, of course, if we didn’t play songs like Sister Awake or The Bazaar or Temptation, there would probably be a revolt in the audience, so there are things that we have to play and we love playing still, but there’s going to be some deep cuts that people haven’t heard in a long time.
After a tour like this how do you top that next time?
I don’t know. I don’t know. Two opera houses? I don’t know. I mean, we’re always up for a challenge, and we’ve got a really good team behind us that know the business side of things, they’re also very creative with their business decisions. And so between our camp and the band, the artists, we do come up with ways to challenge ourselves, because we don’t want to rest on our laurels. What’s pretty exciting is, since Jeff Burrows has been here, it’s been a week now, we’ve actually been in the studio for the last couple days here on the Sunshine Coast, and we’ve been cutting new Tea Party material.
Wow, really?
Yeah, so there’s gonna be a new EP, well, definitely a single by winter here in Australia, like I say around June, but there’ll be a new EP by the end of the year.
What sort of style, or is it too early to reveal that? Is it kind of pushing the Tea Party in a slightly different direction again?
Basically, what I’ve decided and what I’ve noticed, I listen to Triple J in the afternoons quite a lot, and I keep my ears to the ground with new rock music. But the one thing that I do know is that what The Tea Party is known for, I guess… like, you know, it’s been called Moroccan Roll, and it’s the whole Middle Eastern, North African, Indian influences that come into the hard rock that we make. No one else is doing it.
So what the three of us have decided, like I said, our last two EPs were more like straight‑ahead rock music, what we’ve decided is let’s do what we do best, and the thing that no one else does, let’s go back to that heavy Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Indian, Turkish influence, and make that kind of music because truth be told, that’s what The Tea Party audience probably expects, and we’ve done it so well in the past, the challenge will be to do it better. That’s why I spend my afternoons researching music from different parts of the world, being influenced, and dusting off all of those exotic instruments that I have scattered around the property. So it’s going be a fun year.
When you listen to Triple J, what do you think about rock and roll now? Is it still alive and well?
Oh, yeah, man it is. It’s more popular than probably what the 90s had on offer, but hey the Foo Fighters are still making great music, Tool’s still making great music. Triple J, it’s more of the younger generation, but I really dig things like Gang of Youths and Ocean Alley, things like that. I appreciate the music. It’s just like I said, no one’s doing what the Tea Party can do, and so we’re ready to come back in, and pardon the language, but piss on our own territory.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch The Tea Party on the following dates, tickets from Live Nation…
