Sunday 6 March 2011

After funding was withheld from leading NZ contemporary group Stroma for this year, the senior-student/recent-graduate ensemble SMP was

left to carry the torch for new "concert" music - at least for Wellington. Thankfully, some money was made available by Creative NZ for "Interiors I", the first of two presentations exploring subtleties of tone colour and aspects of player interaction. All but one... read more

also: SOUNZ Contemporary Award 2010  (preview): Chris Gendall: "Rudiments"; Ross Harris:  "Violin Concerto No. 1"; Chris Cree Brown: "Inner Bellow". New Zealand Music Month 2010 began with a highlight - the "Sequences" concert from leading contemporary music group Stroma, which  featured NZ premieres of two recent offerings from Ross Harris and Chris Gendall. These large-ensemble, almost orchestrally weighty scores, bookended a series of  mainly solo pieces showcasing the virtuoso talents of individual Stroma members. Luciano Berio's 1958 monodic... read more

The Todd Corporation's - and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's - support for the Young Composer Awards makes it one of the most important arts sponsorships in the country. Their promotion of the growing point - the apical meristem - of creative artistic development promises to deliver a much greater return in cultural benefits than the (more typical) funding that goes into many, more prominent, areas. As conductor and co-adjudicator... read more

"Extreme Lands" was an event incorporating sound (live and recorded), words, and images, imaginatively curated by Wellington composer Alexandra Hay. There were four items on the programme, beginning with "Cigarettes for Ping Pong" by experimental singer-songwriter Carol Micallef, which she sang in her attractive voice, accompanying herself on a tiny retro synth, with the aid of erstwhile guitarist Dylan Lardelli on viola. Alexandra Hay's own work, "Moon Song", utilized a text... read more

This concert organized by the enterprising Caprice Arts Trust featured an adventurous array of contemporary music. At the more conservative, conscientiously-constructed end of the spectrum, Denmark's Soren Nils Eichberg's "4 Pieces for Bassoon and Piano" effectively showcased the artistry of their commissioner, New Zealander Ben Hoadley. Much of the first piece involved the bassoon in a dialogue with itself across its different registers, from deep and mellow to high and... read more

"Selisih", an Indonesian word meaning "argumentative discussion", was the name given by German composer Dieter Mack to his duo for alto and baritone saxophones. Mack, now on his third visit to New Zealand in a professional capacity, has lived in Indonesia studying gamelan performance practice, and (partly inspired by this) has made the interactions between players, one of the fundamental principles of his music. The name was subsequently adopted... read more

Is ballet music programme music when performed without the ballet? If it is, then is it "about" the dance action onstage, or is it, instead, more "about" the story and images that inspired the ballet's  scenario in the first place? If so, then Stravinsky (famous for the dictum that music expresses only itself) may, paradoxically, have written one of the greatest tone poems of the twentieth century. These were some... read more