Author: Lindis Taylor

Letter from Hon Kris Faafoi: a turn-around on RNZ Concert?

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

After a couple of weeks silence from the Government and Radio NZ itself, this letter seemed to bring us the result that we’d hoped for. Or has it really?

Though the Prime Minister had announced earlier that an unused FM frequency was in fact available, which meant that Concert could continue to use its existing frequencies, while the proposed youth network would use the till-now unused ones, many other important aspects of the service that have been eroded over the past year or so, still look at risk.

What of the plans to fire all 18 existing Concert presenters and other support staff, to turn it into a juke-box broadcaster with no human being announcing the music; and the presumed disappearance of live broadcasts from our orchestras, and other musicians, of talks and documentaries, which have largely disappeared already? Will funding be restored to the level of, say, 10 years ago to allow the service to behave as such broadcasters do in all other civilised countries? And will we see the restoration of a less ‘personalised’, commercial-aping style with its endless, repetitive promotions of programmes whose ‘character’ is artificially generated as if each was competing for your personal attention. And the dominance by the playing of single movements of multi-movement music, as if Concert listeners had suddenly become unlettered, shallow simpletons with a very limited attention span.

The rather perfunctory comment covering these latter questions leaves us in doubt about the Government’s real commitment to a properly staffed, adequately funded and decently presented classical radio network.

This is the only reference in the letter to the above shortcomings:

“As you will be aware, RNZ has now withdrawn its proposal for changes to RNZ Concert. We are pleased that RNZ is taking this approach…”

If that suggests that the ultimate handling of these critically important issues simply remains in the hands of RNZ’s management, what then is the point of a Minister of Broadcasting at all?

The following is the Minister’s reply, presumably sent to all who wrote to him:

“Thank you for your correspondence about RNZ’s proposed changes to RNZ Concert.

I want to assure you that we are aware of the significance of RNZ Concert to New Zealand’s music sector and to its listeners. It is clear that this service plays an important role in the lives of a great many New Zealanders and has a loyal and committed following.

One of the key purposes of public media and a core Government priority for the arts is helping overcome barriers to access, and this is something RNZ Concert does very well for many New Zealanders. It has also been particularly heartening to hear from a diverse range of Kiwi musicians, composers and others in the industry about what RNZ Concert means to them.

At the Cabinet meeting on 10 February 2020, Government agreed it did not want RNZ Concert to lose its FM platform and agreed to explore what would be involved in allocating the currently unutilised 102FM frequency to RNZ’s proposed youth-focussed service. RNZ has publicly welcomed this step.

We support RNZ in seeking to increase its reach to more New Zealand youth and are happy that it now has the opportunity to pursue two goals – to continue broadcasting RNZ Concert on FM radio, while also looking to establish a new service targeted to audiences in the 18 to 34-year-old age range.

As you will be aware, RNZ has now withdrawn its proposal for changes to RNZ Concert. We are pleased that RNZ is taking this approach, and have asked our officials to stay in touch with RNZ on these matters.

Once again, thank you for writing and for taking the time to share your views. Please be assured that you have been heard.

Ngā mihi

Hon Kris Faafoi”

 

Festival stages remarkable, eccentric opera by Canadian, Claude Vivier

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Festival of the Arts
Kopernikus: Opéra – rituel de mort by Claude Vivier

Directed by Peter Sellars and curated by Lemi Ponifasio
Singers: Roomful of Teeth
Instrumentalists: Ensemble l’instant donné

Opera House, Wellington

Sunday 1 March, 7 pm

It hasn’t been hard to have missed references in the international musical press to a very unusual opera by an unorthodox, fairly obscure composer.

Think again if you imagined you would be presented with a kind of operatic biography of the great astronomer, for he is merely one of a number of disparate historical and fictional figures that feature in Canadian composer Claude Vivier’s work. A work that that is dominated by the contemplation of death, subtitled: the Ritual of Death.

It was composed in 1978/79 and premiered on 9 May 1980 at the University of Montreal where it has had several subsequent productions. Vivier was killed, apparently in a homosexual encounter in Paris in 1983.

Peter Sellars directed its first United States production in 2016 at the Ojay Music Festival in California, in the production that has since been seen in various places including Bilbao, New York, Paris … and finally in Wellington. The work seems not to have been much revived, if at all, through the 1990s apart from in Canada, but has more recently seen several productions, which I enlarge on in an Appendix. One of the co-production names, apart from the Paris Autumn Festival at the Théâtre de la ville, is the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, in Hanover.

The richest variety of reactions have emerged from critics and the general audience, about Kopernikus. It’s been described as a transition from life to death, transcendental, mystical, disorientating, atmospheric, ethereally beautiful, immersive, stirring, mesmerizing, evocative.

Were he alive, Vivier would claim that complaints about the obscurity and the disorientating impact of the work miss the point. It is not perhaps incoherent; but to take a sympathetic view of it, very unusual in its context, its style and language. Its subject matter which can be felt as philosophically and intellectually pretentious, suggest the sort of creation that a gifted undergraduate might produce to show a wide-ranging though recent familiarity with disparate eras and aspects of philosophical, religious notions; a juxtaposition of science, orthodox philosophical ideas laced with varieties of mysticism such as in the role of Agni, the Vedic god of fire.

The words and the music 
One unusual, though plain element arises with Copernicus whose then-revolutionary findings about the movement of the planets and the sun is delivered in normal speech. Vivier suggests that “as he transformed understanding of the universe, death changes our understanding of our lives”.

Similarly pertinent, are later brief references to major philosophers, from Thales and Plato, through Averroes in the 12th century, to Copernicus himself.

We are not confronted however, by music that is problematic. There is nothing wildly dissonant and incoherent such as was favoured by the avant-garde through the latter years of the century. The character of the vocal and instrumental music is unusual, original, even bizarre, yet it has an emotional impact that marks it as genuinely imaginative. It arouses curiosity and much of it can be listened to with simple pleasure. Harmonies are usually conventional though employed in strange ways.

One review from Canada described it as ‘…a surreal experience for the audience’. And continued: ‘The work’s intimate power, manifest weirdness, sublimely sonic harmonies, meditative incandescence and above all, ritualistic remembrance of all universes past and future’.
Yes.

The ‘staging’ was a curious matter; need it really have been in an opera house? For it didn’t use the pit, and the disposition of players and singers was simply functional, influenced by whoever was performing from time to time. Players mingled with singers, and they all moved about, not in a way that suggested a plot or actual events, but simply to position themselves for their next individual offering. That casualness contributed to the agreeable impression that the entire performance generated.

And there’s a dead man lying on a slab in the centre of the stage; at one point he is spoken to directly, “Eternity comes to speak to us and we must listen; sublime revelation is the voice of time…”    He rises miraculously at the beginning of the second part. It wasn’t clear to me whether he then took a particular part or even spoke or sang at all.

Singers and instrumentalists
Both singers and instrumentalists have worked with Sellars elsewhere. All are dressed in white and are together on a partially raised stage with no sets other than chairs and a bed on which a dead man lies.

The seven singers, Roomful of Teeth, cover the full range from coloratura soprano to bass; they each have conspicuous roles and displayed remarkable sympathy with the music, both its coherence and its incoherence. For the most part they sing individually, but there are occasional ensembles that reveal interesting, engaging harmonies, which might technically be dissonances, but they are so beautifully used that they are heard as good examples of intelligent dissonance with genuine artistic purpose. The singers take roles: Copernicus himself and his mother, Lewis Carroll, Merlin, a witch, Mozart and the Queen of the Night, Tristan and Isolde, and a central character: Agni. But the programme notes spell out a great number of subsidiary roles taken by each singer, drawn from Vivier.

Much of the singing is in Vivier’s made-up language and most of the rest is in French and surtitles covered the latter. But it was rarely possible in a single hearing, to identify singers of individual roles, nor is there a story line to create any semblance of a normal opera.

The seven orchestral players the Ensemble l’instant donné comprise a violin, 3 clarinets – – one doubled on a bass clarinet, an oboe, trumpet – not usually visible, and trombone, and there’s a collection of percussion. It was a lively, always energising performance by these seven musicians, conspiring brilliantly with the singers throughout.

Also included in a well balanced programme book, is an excellent, short essay by Clarissa Dunn (of ‘Concert FM’, at least for the moment).

A New York Times review commented: “The best Vivier performances capture his delirious, jewelled grandeur but also his modesty — the earnest intensity of his desire to communicate, even through nonsense syllables.”

 

Appendix
Earlier productions
After its initial performances in Montreal it has been revived there in 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989; in London in 1985 at the Almeida Festival, in Paris in 1989, and in Vancouver in 1990.

It’s remarkable that it had taken 41 years for it to be heard in New York, and 38 years for the United States generally (at the Ojai Music Festival in California in 2016); but does that say something about relations between the US and Canada, and even more with Quebec: not least about the cultural condition of a country where opera, and classical music generally, are in the hands of the private sector rather than of enlightened state institutions.

It’s fared better in Europe. In Amsterdam in 2014; in 2018 it was performed in the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse; at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin, in January 2019. And as remarked above, this production was shared with KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, in Hanover. While it’s now, perhaps as a result of its espousal by a director as famous as Sellars, being seen more widely, it has clearly not been eagerly taken up by any of the major opera houses. Its first appearance in New York, last year, was at a minor Brooklyn theatre, the production have been premiered in a planetarium in Buenos Aires; in Paris it was at the normally non-music Théâtre de la ville, which is opposite the major operatic, Châtelet theatre.

A review of a 2001 performance in Montreal in London’s Opera magazine commented that Kopernikus had become Canada’s most frequently performed opera. And it remarked that the performance seen in Montreal came at the end of a cross-country run of performances by Toronto’s Autumn Leaf Productions.

It was that production that ran in Huddersfield in 2000, and was reviewed by Opera magazine’s editor John Allison in February 2001. His very measured review included this observation: “It could easily irritate even the mildest of sceptics, and the compelling grip of this performance was thanks in part to the simple and poetic staging by the Toronto-based Autumn Leaf Performance company”.

It was the simplicity and unpretentiousness of the Sellars’ production in Wellington that moderated the degree of scepticism that I too felt about the ‘story’ aspect of the work.

And I found myself somewhat, by no means entirely, in sympathy with critic Robert Markow’s remark in Opera magazine about the Toronto performance:
“Kopernikus is rich in potential, yet the opera is maddeningly unfulfilling. Beyond the score’s obviously imaginative and original instrumental sound-world, a giant leap of faith is required to connect with Vivier’s autobiographical display of self-indulgence masquerading as a universal initiation myth.”

And I do not share a peremptory dismissal such as this: “Yet within three minutes of the 70-minute ‘opera-ritual of death’, it was evident that Mr. Vivier’s inspiration came from a senseless jumble of eclectic paraphernalia.”

By the way, the name has become an EU issue. There has been a move to change the spelling of the name to the German version, which is as spelt in Vivier’s opera (though in French it’s Copernic). Poland has protested; it is Kopernik in Polish. Copernicus was born Torun which is now in Poland but which over the centuries has been in either Poland or Prussia. One Polish authority has recommended a compromise using the Latin spelling which is Copernicus, which if course has long been the international name.

 

Barbara Paterson’s moving operatic portrayal of love in crisis in Poulenc’s monodrama

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Human Voice (La voix humaine) by Françis Poulenc based on the play by Jean Cocteau. Translated by Johana Arnold and Barbara Paterson

Barbara Paterson (soprano) with Gabriela Glapska (piano)
Tabitha Arthur – director; Meredith Dooley – costumier; Isadora Lao – lighting designer and operator

Gallery of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Queen’s Wharf

Friday 27 February 6 pm

My colleague Peter Mechen reviewed what might have been considered the preview performance of Poulenc’s monodrama La voix humaine, on 31 January.

But being a huge fan of Poulenc I felt that Paterson’s performance in the Festival itself deserved attention.

La voix humaine is one of the most remarkable operatic pieces: not merely of the 20th century; not merely on account of the music which is a tremblingly vivid evocation of Elle’s mental fragility; but also in the way it deals so illuminatingly with her behaviour, her dependence on and interaction with a lover who has evidently decided to quit.

Sometimes the substitution of an orchestra by a piano seems to be a serious loss, with its more limited ability to interpret emotions and to provide rewarding support. Here the piano, with the shrill ringing of the telephone right at the beginning, hurled us straight into her emotional turmoil; it seemed just as chilling as the original score’s xylophone.

In addition, I am usually a strong advocate for the use of the original language in song and opera, but here, the singer’s total immersion in Elle’s mind and emotional state overcame any such feelings, even any feeling that English was not the original language. Johana Arnold’s translation was a perfect fit, though I couldn’t prevent a certain curiosity about how a performance in French might have intensified the impact in certain ways. (I have heard it, not live I think, in the original).

The performance opened with what sounded like a rifle shot: I wasn’t sure whether it was an external coincidence or a hint of the ultimate possibility of suicide.

The phone rings chillingly on the piano, and she picks it up but there’s no connection; it rings again, but now it’s a call for someone else, and there are several further rings before finally, it’s her lover. And now Paterson’s virtuosic performance immediately finds expression for her desperation and panic, alternating with attempts to sound rational, with the knowledge or at least fear that he wants to break it up, or even that he has done that.

Not all words were clear, smothered often by her uncontrolled outbursts, but her condition and her behaviour remained so conspicuous to the audience that we didn’t need to catch every word.

She grasps at straws: “You are so sweet … I am calm!” And the piano comments on or reveals the constant, overwhelming state of despair and grief that the break-up inflicts on her. It’s common to remark on the fact that an orchestral or other accompaniment is playing a major role in the drama, but there have been few occasions when I’ve felt as strongly about the vital role of the piano as I did here.

The telephone’s role
The drama continues with a succession of broken connections, whether by her former lover or through an operator’s mistake, we don’t know. The telephone itself and the omnipresent operator are significant players. I can remember in my childhood the sometimes obtrusive operator and the common ‘party line’ (my family had one), shared with three or four other subscribers, all of which the operator could listen to: the operator was thus privy to most of the scandal in the community. But this was a dimension that was not likely to have been in Poulenc’s mind, when local calls were not monitored by the operator, though Cocteau’s original play was written in 1928, 30 years before Poulenc’s setting.

Often it’s intentionally unclear whether the ‘disconnection’ is by the operator or the lover or whether it’s just something in Elle’s mind that brings about panic, a scream or mad laugh.

Paterson’s repertory of voices and screams allowed what was an overwhelming emotional condition to express to her lover her attempts to appear rational and in control, but exposing herself with the almost terrifying laugh, half-way to wild panic.

About half-way, she uttered a particularly wild scream, quickly suppressed, which led to one of the few beautiful lyrical episodes.

Gabriela Glapska’s piano was almost always the perfect partner, but very occasionally it became so passionately involved that it almost got in the way. Though that could well be attributed to the fact that the piano, like the telephone itself, was an important player.

Patterson’s performance was so comprehensively satisfying, so perfectly attuned to the words and the emotions and the music at every point that one could well have imagined that no histrionic direction was needed, But that becomes the crowning achievement of a sensitive director, merely to refine and enhance a singer’s own instincts so that the result seems to flow entirely from the performer’s own impulses. That was Tabitha Arthur’s achievement, that had her climbing one of two step-ladders at various times; symbolic of Elle’s compulsion to achieve security in an essentially insecure world. And in the lighting, Isadora Lao was similarly unobtrusive but, given the entirely natural feel of the atmosphere, was another case or art concealing art. And Meredith Dooley created Peterson’s wispy, pastel-shaded costume that also spoke of her fragility and insecurity.

There was a smallish audience; but here was a moving, very credible performance that deserved a much larger crowd.

 

NZSO, Gorecki and Ponifasio/MAU share singularly successful juxtaposing of utterly disparate creations, of profound common human vulnerabilities

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Festival of the Arts

“Chosen and Beloved”: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristjan Järvi with MAU Wahine
Created by Lemi Ponifasio

Performers: MAU Wāhine
In white: Kahumako Rameka and Ria Te Uira Paki
In black: Rosie Te Rauawhea Belvie, Kasina Campbell, Terri Crawford, Rangipo Ihakara-Wallace, Anitopapa Kopua, Taiahotea Paki-Hill

Gorecki: Symphony No 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs), with soprano Racha Tizk

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 21 February, 7:30 pm

It might have been slightly unusual to open a festival with a work (two works?) whose subject was the nature of woman, childbirth, even death, and dealing indirectly with one of the most terrible episodes in history.

However, it drew attention to the way in which this festival has been created and conceived. Substantially put together by three leading figures in the performing arts, ‘Guest Curators’, carefully chosen with attention to racial and cultural balance, and sheer imaginative and creative genius.

This concert was the inspiration of Lemi Ponifasio, ‘director and choreographer’. Though not a name very familiar to music audiences in New Zealand, he’s been involved for many years in performance activities that don’t match ordinary categories at international arts festivals, for example, at festivals at Avignon, Marseille, the Theater Der Welt and the Ruhr Triennale in Germany, at the Venice Biennale, for the opening of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi; in Noumea, and Sydney; and even an appearance at the 2012 festival in Wellington (which I didn’t see).

[You may be interested (I was) in the surprising history of MAU’s activities around the world: I copy an article in an appendix at the end.]

The Maori ‘ceremony’ from MAU Wahine
When the audience was allowed into the auditorium at 7:15 it was greeted at once with the performance, though there were no sounds. The stage itself delivered an immediate message: the entire back wall and choir stalls was shrouded by black curtains and a white sheet covered a four metre, or so, width of the stage extending from side to side in front of the empty orchestra seats. An array of rocks was scattered over it.

A woman in white, with long black hair (Kahumako Rameka), was walking very slowly from side to side, and she began to deliver a long lamenting whaikorero (a Karakia – about protection), about her origins, the different stages of birth and re-birth.

Soon two black-clad women appeared at the foot of aisles on either side of the balcony; they intoned first one then the other, though amplification made it difficult to tell who was singing, especially after five others appeared on the stage – that didn’t matter, but amplification removes that important aspect. However, the voices created a transcendent, ethereal effect that sought to avoid literal or precise understanding.

These were MAU Wahine, Ponifasio’s dance theatre company (‘Mau’ is the Samoan word meaning ‘the declaration of the truth’). For some time it bothered me that I could not understand their words, or at least their drift, but eventually I concluded that the women and a child in the arms was simply a reflection, or an anticipation, of the Gorecki composition, perhaps encompassing the experience of the loss of a child in awful circumstances. Gorecki said that his symphony was an evocation of the ties between mother and child, and I sensed that that might also have been the best way of interpreting the Mau ‘ceremony’ that had preceded it.

These were my own surmises, but I found myself taking it all very seriously, and I decided it would be useful to me as well as others if I could elaborate the meaning of what was happening.

So I contacted the Festival, asking whether members of the company could help my understanding (I could do this, not having a tight dead-line to adhere to). Very helpful information reached me later on Monday. I’m indebted to MAU Wahine for responding to my request.

I continue, with the benefit of their help.

When eventually a second white-clad woman appeared (Ria Te Uira Paki) with a baby in her arms, the message, expressed through their lamentations at the suffering and exploitation of women, chimed with the essential message of Gorecki’s music.

Ria Te Uira Paki delivered “a Pātere (chant), specifically Māreikura, perhaps the embodiment of the female essence. The word Māreikura can be translated or described as in all of its forms. The Pātere recites the genealogical connection to seven pro-dominant female entities within Māoridom and how they imbued their qualities within wāhine Māori. It talks of their journeys and connections being interwoven into our own feminine beings. It is a reminder of the feminine essence of Papatuanuku our terrestrial mother and the unbroken connection of the umbilical cord that  bonds us all the cosmic divine. A power, a strength and the beauty that we all hold and can conjure from within.”

My only uncertain criticism might have been of the length of this creation, with its quite protracted expanses of chant that ninety percent of the audience could not understand, even though its likely significance could be guessed at. Was it so different from the wordless 80 minutes of a Bruckner symphony or an extended liturgical work in Latin whose literal text is not understood in detail? In the end I dismissed this thought as a reasonable criticism.

The Gorecki Symphony
The words ‘Chosen and Beloved’ are taken from the first line of the first poem used in the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.

But first, some of Ponifasio’s words:
“In the ceremony of Chosen and Beloved, we greet and embrace those who have gone before us, and prepare to welcome those who are about to join us. We acknowledge the difficulties of the past, share our sufferings and hopes, and with deep empathy begin to construct together the world we wish for ourselves, and for the new generation.”

Gorecki is recorded as not wanting to write a symphony ‘about war’, dealing with the horrors of war; and so in no way does he display in this work, bitterness or hatred of the perpetrators of the three events that inspire the symphony’s three movements. He wanted his work to be heard as three independent laments, and not really like a symphony at all.

The famous words of the second movement were found on the wall of a Gestapo prison at Zakopane in southern Poland. The words used in the two other movements also had their origin in poems that touched, not on the horrors of war or the Holocaust, but on mothers’ grief for the loss of a son, probably in the Silesian Uprisings in 1919-21, and for the third movement, words from a folk song in which Mary speaks to Jesus dying on the cross.

Reading about the reactions to its original performances in the late 70s and even after the huge success of the famous Dawn Upshaw recording in 1991, the critical nastiness that was uttered comes as a surprise now, when devotion to the sterility of the avant-garde, dissonance, and serialism has largely disappeared. I recall the anger vented on some of the reviews I wrote at that time, unappreciative as I was of the slavishly disagreeable music composition students were expected to write then.

Gorecki himself had rejected the dictates of the avant-garde Inquisition; and it’s almost a surprise to observe how, in many ways there’s been  a return to the idea that music needs to engage audiences.

There’s much to be fascinated and moved by in the work: first, though the orchestra is quite large, with quadruple flutes, clarinets and bassoons, horns and trombones the range of instruments is limited: no oboes or trumpets, no timpani or percussion. Each string section is in two parts and often operate separately. One’s attention is drawn to that at the beginning as the first almost inaudible sound is from the double basses, taking about 15 minutes to move through all the strings and a sequence of keys each in a different mode. That sequence was followed in reverse before the soprano entered.

Racha Rizk is a Syrian with an attractive, ethereal soprano voice, that was beautifully suited to the lamenting quality of Gorecki’s music which in turn reflected the emotions of each of the verses.

She sang in a sort of isolation from the front of the balconies nearest the stage: first on the right, then on the left, and for the third movement, from a high, obscure platform in the middle of the black curtain that covered the entire wall behind the orchestra. That separation of voice from the orchestra meant that the balance between the two varied with each movement and according to ones’ seat in the auditorium. That is no criticism: merely an observation.

What might have been a bother for some was the array of fluorescent tubes suspended above the front and rear of the stage which probably affected the visibility of the stage for those in the centre of the balcony.

I was interested to read about Rizk’s background: Syrian classical music performers do not flood the concert halls and opera houses. The programme note included this (to me) interesting item:

After her exile in France due to the war in Syria, Racha is continuing her concerts in Europe with orchestras including the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra and ORNINA Orchestra, performing Syrian symphonic compositions in concert halls including the Berliner Konzerthaus, Bremen’s Die Glucke, Berlin Philharmonie and Athens Megaron.

In the hands of Kristjan Järvi the orchestra was electrifying in the extraordinarily restrained and spiritual passages (and there are really no other kinds of music in it). There’s a full hour of music, and it cast a spell over the audience, so that at the end when the entire back wall turned into a vivid cascade, the audience remained subdued.

The audience, uncertain about the end, clapped before the water ceased to flow and the lights came up, breaking off as they sensed that it was emotionally unfinished. So they clapped again when the real ending was signalled and the conductor rested his baton.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Lemi Ponifasio / ‘MAU Jerusalem Inside Us’

From the programme booklet for the Jerusalem concert on the following evening, which was more complete than the notes for Chosen and Beloved.

Lemi Ponifasio founded MAU in 1995 working with diverse cultures and communities around the world. His collaborators are people from all walks of life, performing in factories, remote villages, opera houses, schools, marae, castles, galleries and stadiums. Mau is the Samoan word meaning the declaration of the truth.

Lemi Ponifasio is acclaimed internationally for his radical work as a choreographer, stage director and designer, and for his collaborations with many communities.

The projects have included fully staged operas, theatre, dance, exhibitions, community forums and festivals in more than 30 countries.

He has presented his creations with MAU in many places including Festival d’Avignon, Lincoln Center New York, BAM New York, Ruhrtriennale, LIFT Festival London, Edinburgh International Festival, Theater der Welt, Festival de Marseille, Theatre de la Ville Paris, Onassis Cultural Centre Athens, Holland Festival, Luminato Festival Toronto, Vienna Festival, Santiago a Mil Chile, the Venice Biennale and in the Pacific region.

His recent works include Love To Death (2020) with MAU Mapuche, Santiago Chile; KANAKA (2019) with Theatre Du Kanaky, New Caledonia; Mausina with MAU Wāhine for 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand (2018) and Standing In Time (2017) with MAU Wāhine; Die Gabe Der Kinder (2017) with children and community of Hamburg; Ceremony of Memories (2016 and 2017) with MAU Mapuche of Chile; Recompose (2016) with MAU Wāhine and Syrian women for Festival Herrenhausen, Hanover; Lagimoana Installation (2015) for the Venice Biennale 56th Visual Arts Exhibition; Apocalypsis, Toronto (2015); I AM: Mapuche, Chile (2015) and I AM for the 100th Anniversary of WW1 (2014), which premiered at Festival d’Avignon.

Other major international performance tours by Lemi Ponifasio and MAU include The Crimson House (2014), Stones In Her Mouth (2013), the opera Prometheus by Carl Orff (2012), Le Savali: Berlin (2011), Birds With Skymirrors (2010), Tempest: Without A Body (2008), Requiem (2006) and Paradise (2005).

 

Appendix 2

From The New Zealand Herald

From an interview with Lemi Ponifasio before the performance at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in 2012

Birds With Skymirrors …..

“Some people think I am God, some people think I am the devil,” says choreographer Lemi Ponifasio, whose Birds With Skymirrors will cast his usual controversial spell, this time over Wellington’s St James Theatre for two nights of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Ponifasio and his dance theatre company Mau – which he prefers to speak of in terms of “community”, just as he repels the label of “performance” for his work – are far more feted in Europe than in New Zealand. Mau is a regular highlight of all the great arts festivals, biennales, triennales and “festspieles” of Europe, but it will be his first time at the New Zealand festival.

“Well, well,” he says, with the sly, characteristic smile than might mean amusement, cynicism – or pain.

The title Birds With Skymirrors was inspired by the apocalyptic sight of frigate birds flying over the ocean off Tarawa Island, in the Pacific, carrying glittering pieces of black plastic waste in their beaks, the ripped plastic looking like liquid mirrors.

The momentous issue of climate change, and the global discussions and negotiations about the future of the planet, were already on Ponifasio’s mind, and a subject he wanted to work with. “The frigate birds provided the symbolic image,” he says. “Birds have long been attached to our desire to be free.”

The resulting work, a powerful reflection on our connection with our environment, expressed through dance, poetry, ceremony, chant and oratory, premiered in Europe in 2010.

Formerly based at the Corban Estate in West Auckland, where he also regularly held the extraordinary Mau Forums, Ponifasio declares himself a failure in that he no longer has a home in New Zealand, the Pacific heart-spring and source of inspiration for all he does. “I have had to go international to survive,” he says.

Ponifasio is back in New Zealand briefly, between extensive European engagements, to find a new base, probably in South Auckland. The constant travelling between New Zealand and Europe is difficult for his immediate family and for his Mau family. And expensive.

“I am working on it, it will come,” he says. “The nature of current work in New Zealand has been that of a production line that I don’t fit. Europe has a bigger capacity to take on something provocative, something more than just arts and crafts and the entertainment industry.”

Born and raised in Samoa until he was 15, he came to New Zealand to complete his formal education, living in a Catholic priory until he was 21. But it is the experience of living in the natural world far more than human-made cultures and religious ideologies that inform Ponifasio’s unique voice. It is a voice that reflects the primal drama of the rhythms of the earth, the cycles of light and dark, life and death, rain and sun, the moon, the cosmos and mankind’s vulnerability, struggles, rituals, strange ceremonies and surrender within.

“To negotiate this exchange in life, Samoan parents tell their children the most important motto: to teu le va – to tender the space, to reverence the space, to be the space, to beautify the space, to embellish the space,” he says. “This is relational space, consciousness, a cosmological relationship with all existence. We call this ‘va’.”

Mau Forum 2010 took place at Schloss Charlottenberg, a historic palace in Berlin, and illustrates Ponifasio’s va in action.

“Not long ago, not far from this place, the people of Berlin exhibited Samoan people, like animals, in their zoo,” Ponifasio said on that occasion, “and not long ago, the people of Berlin came all the way down to Samoa and dominated and colonised the Samoan people.

“So it is very important that today we welcome and host the people of Berlin with respect, ceremony, theatre and art and share a meal, to allow for the clearing of space and the harmonising of spirit – so the work can begin.”

Ponifasio aims, he says, for “transformation”, which is equal parts prayer and political activism.

His work Tempest: Without a Body featured New Zealand’s own “face of terror” Tama Iti and terrorist suspect (since exonerated) Ahmed Zaoui.

“I make work for those who love this kind of work,” he says, “and for those who don’t like it, it is something to talk about. Art is not enough. I don’t want to make myself an artist. It has to be the path of love, the path of activism and its origins have to be in the community.”

Mau’s most recent work, Le Savali: Berlin, prompted French newspaper Le Figaro to propose Lemi Ponifasio as “the new miracle” on the choreographic landscape.

Ponifasio returns to Germany this year to produce his first opera, Carl Orff’s Prometheus, for the Ruhr Triennial 2012.

 

Is the Government paralysed by timidity? An update on the RNZ Concert crisis and a mass protest concert at Parliament

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

An update on the RNZ Concert crisis

A protest concert on Parliament’s steps
News website Scoop has published details of a concert involving hundreds of musicians performing in Parliament Grounds to voice their opposition to plans to axe RNZ Concert, the country’s only classical and jazz music station.

A massed choir and orchestra, conducted by Wellington’s Brent Stewart, have chosen RNZ Concert’s 87th birthday, Monday 24th February, to voice their support, with a performance of the classical hit Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.

The protest concert will be on the steps of Parliament at 4 pm on Monday 24 February
See: http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=125655

Government appears paralysed on RNZ crisis 
You won’t be surprised that I am more than a little agitated, dismayed, even angry about this attack on RNZ Concert. While it looks as if they’ve found a spare FM frequency, so allowing them to persist with their misguided intention of creating a new radio channel ‘catering for’ young audiences, many other destructive things could still happen.

Starting from the top, Thompson must be removed along with the board who have been unbelievably complicit in and ignorant in their promoting plans virtually to wipe Concert out.

Bearing in mind that the Government has in the past abolished statutory bodies such as regional councils and school boards, only a little courage is needed to remove a wrong-headed, incompetent CEO of Radio New Zealand, and perhaps its entire board.

The issues are far from resolved, yet they are extremely serious  
Will all existing staff be retained and given secure positions? Or is the unspoken intention still to turn it into an anonymous station, like the present midnight to 6am broadcasts, playing endless, unidentified music, as in some web media?

And will RNZ Concert abandon its tedious practice of endlessly self-promoting various ‘programmes’, promoting personalities and individual announcers’ sessions, in the style of TV presenters? And will the ‘popularising’ policy cease, that seeks to generate an intimacy through the presenters’ language, encouraging them to decorate their words with personal anecdotes, gushings about the rapturous or wonderful music about to be played?

Yes, it’s nice to sound friendly and interested (and all current presenters do that), but we also want them to treat us like grown-ups, and not patronised with adolescent speech and affectations.

Will RNZ Concert be more adequately funded (drastically reduced over the past decade and more) so that more live performances can be recorded for rebroadcast, and their ability restored to commission talks and documentaries about music and the other arts, such as there were up to 20 or so years ago? Being increasingly constrained in the quid-pro-quo of exchanging programmes with European and American networks, I gather we are now being treated as a charity case; a shameful situation that should embarrass the Government.

And will it reverse the shabby practice of playing single movements instead of entire works? About 80% of broadcasts of symphonies, sonatas, chamber and other multi-movement pieces are confined to single movements that leave you hanging, or longing to have heard the earlier movements. It’s very unprofessional.

Thompson must go and board cleaned out
Unless Thompson goes life will continue to be horrible for Concert staff as he will be able to continue to act, in a more obscure, less overt manner perhaps, to dumb down the channel. We must have a chief executive who understands and believes unreservedly in the importance of a classical music channel and energetically restores its essential character; someone who will recover its freedom to use its huge resources of recorded music most of which is locked in the basement.

Somehow, RNZ must be convinced that the success of public radio is not measured by its level of appeal to a particular age or any other group, in the same way as might apply to commercial radio. Very few young people listen to radio, PERIOD! And those that do occasionally, listen to commercial stations that broadcast the sort of music that RNZ plans to broadcast over its new channel.

It would be an irresponsible waste of money to set up a youth-oriented network, unless there was a clear intention to sue it to awaken interest in good music, classical music, music that has stood the test of time. It is not the job of public radio to attract any of those who do not in effect invite themselves.

RNZ’s job is comparable to that of a national library or art museum that devotes itself to storing and exhibiting and promoting works of art or literature of proven importance. Things that might not be looked at every day but which are a vital element in a civilised country. The success of such bodies is not to be measured solely by listener numbers but rather, by the responses of those whose background or long devotion to good music equips them to assess its qualities and its ability to stimulate interest in all those with any sort of curiosity about classical music. That’s not just popular music, though the best of contemporary popular music certainly finds a place.

Nevertheless, it has also been shown by a survey in the UK that the NZ Concert Program has, in terms of audience percentages, the largest listening numbers of all classical music stations in the world.

Silence and passing time makes Minister look indecisive 
It is becoming increasingly disturbing that no decisive action has yet been taken by the Minister, primarily on the need to terminate Thompson’s employment. The more time that passes, the more the Government will appear indecisive and timid, and it will also be plain for all to see that it either isn’t conscious of or doesn’t care about the implications, both domestic and international, of allowing the neglect and indifference of the previous Government to persist. This is an extremely important aspect of New Zealand’s cultural reputation.

Get to Parliament 4pm on Monday 24 February.
Here are links to relevant websites:

There is a Give a Little campaign set up to raise $10,000 to help with costs of this concert in Parliament Grounds.

https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/savernzconcert?fbclid=IwAR2ockucLc4bswu4LaTe2cyqTCkCpXOkUZ0e2IuxyCm4oKARMBSfPQjWzhQ

SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music) media release on the need to keep full presentation, scheduling and recording:

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU2002/S00089/the-fight-is-not-over-to-save-rnz-concert-securing-fm-frequencies-is-just-the-beginning.htm

 

Revealing background from former Concert manager

A former manager of RNZ Concert, Miles Rogers, contributed an article in The Dominion Post last week, revealing important background information that illuminates the troubles of RNZ Concert, going back many years.

RNZ Concert from the inside

As a former manager of RNZ Concert, I’m aware that this network has been progressively side-lined and marginalised.

Until the late 1990s a defined funding split operated between National and Concert – c.78% to 22%.  A decision was then taken to apply funding where “most needed” and from that point Concert began to lose ground. By 2003, there was no longer a budget to purchase broadcasting rights to the numerous recorded performances from our professional musical bodies and the various international soloists and ensembles that tour – from that time these rights have generously been given gratis. And since an internal restructuring in late 2014, this stream – a whole RNZ network – has had no direct report to the CEO and therefore no appropriate representation.

Further, the vast library of classical CDs was removed from RNZ House, Wellington in 2017.  This repository is Concert’s bread-and-butter for maintaining variety and scope in its daily schedule.  In recent times, presumably in a directive to appeal to and gain greater listenership, and in part through ever decreasing funding and staffing levels, the output has been reduced to something like a “top 500”, with popular classics often occurring every couple of days, alongside a predominance of single movements. Compounding this, continuity music programming is selected by computer, rather than by musical minds. These factors severely limit programmers’ choice and listeners’ experience. The threat of presenters now facing redundancies continues the present trend that Concert is already automated for most of weekend transmissions and was for a period on weekday evenings – ie no warm body behind the microphone at these times.

Though most listeners would value RNZ Concert for its range of classical music, Concert exists and is funded particularly for the nurturing, recording and dissemination of our musicians and composers… think NZSO, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Chamber Music NZ, New Zealand String Quartet, pianists Michael Houstoun and Diedre Irons, Dames Kiri Te Kanawa and Malvina Major, Douglas Lilburn, John Psathas, – names at the peak of our indigenous talent.  Yet Concert’s work for emerging talent extends to secondary schools’ level through annual recordings of such as the NZCT Chamber Music Contest and The Big Sing.  There must surely be listeners too at Epsom Girl’s Grammar, who successfully hijacked 2019’s “Settling the Score”. Decreased funding has made such recording more and more difficult to carry out. I can only applaud the dedication of remaining staff, the lengths they go to in maintaining a professional product that still retains agreed quotas of NZ performance and composition within the overall schedule.

There’s a defined, finite audience for every music brand. That classical music has a smaller audience than popular brands should not diminish its value. RNZ Concert covers the broad range of classical, jazz, popular, film and World musics – much as then Director General, John Schroder envisaged when introducing the original YC stations c.1950. As our country’s population ages, more probably migrate from the commercial radio world for the sanity non-commercial radio affords. In truth, RNZ Concert needs a shot in the arm – increased funding – to enhance and regain its former prestige. Of RNZ’s funding from Government in Year 2018/19 totalling $43.4 million, I wonder what percentage was apportioned to RNZ Concert?  Throughout the 1980s RNZ’s technical and music staffs built a country-wide FM transmission network for fine music. To relegate this stream to much lesser quality AM transmission would be a retrograde step.

Section 175 of the Radiocommunications Act 1989: Conditions of licences relating to the FM Concert Programme and National Radio” includes the following: “that the first priority for the use of the frequency to which the licence relates shall be the broadcasting of (1) in the case of a licence that relates to the service known as the FM Concert Programme”. Does this not guarantee FM transmission for RNZ Concert?

Miles Rogers

And write to Minister of Broadcasting Kris Faafoi  (k.faafoi@ministers.govt.nz) and the Prime Minister (j.ardern@ministers.govt.nz).

Those at work, get an hour off to attend this important concert, and think about making a donation through Give-a-little to the large cost of staging a performance like this.

Send this to your friends.

Lindis Taylor

Startup industry expertise in accounting and CFO services

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

accounting services for startups

Being able to monitor your startup’s financial health helps you make data-backed decisions for the betterment of your startup. Online bookkeeping is a digital alternative to traditional bookkeeping services. With online bookkeeping, you can manage accounting services for startups financial transactions, balance accounts, and prepare for tax season. Being able to communicate with the provider that is doing your bookkeeping, taxes, or accounting can eliminate some of the headaches of startup financial management.

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If you familiarize yourself with basic accounting terms and invest in a good accounting software package, you’ll be well on your way to success. Xero is another emerging online accounting software company providing practical tools and bank connections with a variety of plans to suit any size of business. To ensure that journal entries have been recorded and posted correctly, small businesses use the trial balance accounting method to double-check account balances for a given time period. A trial balance ensures that the debit and credit balances in the ledger accounts match. If you are looking for cost-effective bookkeeping services, Merritt Bookkeeping may be the choice for your startup.

Ready to explore making Mighty Financial your accounting firm?

From Columbia University and an MFA from the New School, graduating at the top of her class. The service is free to use and is designed to help you manage both your day-to-day finances while also helping plan for the future. However, if your main goal is to budget your spending, Empower might not be the best option for you. You may be better off choosing a different app on this list because Empower’s budgeting tools aren’t as advanced as some of the other ones. If your main goal is to track your spending, PocketGuard might be the best app for you.

Effective bookkeeping is essential to the financial management of your startup, accurate tax filing, and financial reporting. To determine the right online bookkeeping service for your business, there are a few factors to consider, like price, features included, service, and hidden fees. A good bookkeeping service can help you keep track of your income and expenses, help you prepare for tax season, and even offer advice on financial planning for your business. In short, a bookkeeping service can be an invaluable resource for any startup.

Sage 50cloud Accounting

Charles graduated law school and received his Juris Doctorate，he subsequently passed the New York State Bar Exam and began working for a certified Public Accounting firm specializing in estate planning. Upon passing the Certified Public Accounting exam he began his own accounting and legal practice. Charles resides in Rockville Centre with his wife Marsha, dog Lucca, and four cats. We know that finding the right accountant is critical to achieving your financial goals.

accounting services for startups

It helps to acquaint yourself with some basic knowledge of accounting terms, of course, but you don’t need to study accounting to use modern accounting software effectively. Look for products with free trials, training materials and tutorials, website support, and a community of users, too. Creating and managing invoices can be time-consuming, and falling behind on generating them can cause a cash crunch. However, Sage 50cloud Accounting users will find invoice generation to be quick and straightforward using the invoice module. The invoice creation dashboard provides a drop-down menu that can prepopulate the invoice with a customer’s contact information. Sage 50cloud Accounting offers the option to print the invoice or send the invoice electronically.

What is the difference between bookkeeping and accounting?

The best startup accountants have worked with multiple high-growth companies, and know which software and systems are ready for hyper growth. QuickBooks is a popular software platform used by small businesses and startups alike. It can be a great option for startup bookkeeping services, depending on the needs of your business. While some bookkeeping services offer a guaranteed fixed price or membership cost, there are some with hidden fees and additional hourly rates. To ensure your bookkeeping services meet your startup’s budget needs, do your research on the platforms that utilize hidden fees and extra costs before you sign up. Boasting over 25,000 small businesses served, Bench is an experienced digital bookkeeping solution.

  • For startups and small businesses, a good budgeting app can help you understand your company’s financial health and make informed decisions.
  • Plus, those types of businesses experience additional regulatory compliance challenges, and Oracle NetSuite has built-in support for ASC 606, GAAP, SOX, and complex revenue recognition rules.
  • Elizabeth brings over 8 years of experience in the accounting field.
  • At Kruze, we would argue that a VC-backed startup should have an accountant/CPA (and not just a bookkeeper).

It could make all the difference in keeping your finances on track. We believe that it’s our team’s job to help save our CEOs time and take care of the basic bookkeeping tasks that other services dump onto their clients. As pioneers in cloud accounting, Kruze has been an Intuit Firm of the Future Finalist, an Expensify Emerging Partner of the Year, and is a Gusto Gold Partner. Kruze’s startup bookkeepers will help your company have accurate, up-to-date financial statements that you can use to manage your business’ growth and cash flow.

Moderated Drinking: A Creative Strategy to Treat Alcoholism?

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Future work would need to assess the effectiveness of this tool in the field without such interference. We encourage you to take the Alcohol Self-Assessment Tests on this website to start developing a better perspective on your drinking behavior and whether abstinence or moderation might be best for you. Keep in mind, however, that no self-assessment test or quiz can substitute for a face-to-face clinical evaluation by a treatment professional. Maintaining moderation in drinking means starting out with a specific goal. The specific goal will depend on the individual’s particular situation.

  • It creates awareness around their using in general, and may well signal to them that their alcohol or drug use is playing a larger role in their lives than they would care to admit.
  • There is a feeling of freedom that results from this commitment where one does not feel hopeless or without choices.
  • On the other hand, upon cutting back on drinking, many heavy drinkers experience improvements in sleep, cognitive function, weight loss, productivity, interpersonal relationships, energy, and overall mental health.
  • While it is legal for adults, it can still be dangerous, and many people do become dependent on this substance.
  • However, moderation doesn’t work for everyone who struggles with alcohol.

Drinking in moderation can teach individuals better drinking habits without eradicating alcohol from their lives. Moderate drinking can be achieved through keeping track of how much you drink, pacing yourself when you drink, avoiding drinking with heavy drinkers, and pinpointing your heavy drinking triggers. By eliminating the sometimes daunting notion of zero-alcohol use, many find a moderation-based approach more attainable in their https://ecosoberhouse.com/ daily lives. It involves the use of medications like naltrexone which help reduce alcohol cravings. They’re able to enjoy an occasional drink while still avoiding negative drinking behaviors and consequences. They looked at the standard model of research for moderate drinking studies – dividing people into never drinkers, moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers – and found that moderate drinkers were the healthiest of the bunch.

What would a good Moderation Program involve?

Ben Lesser is one of the most sought-after experts in health, fitness and medicine. His articles impress with unique research work as well as field-tested skills. He is a freelance medical writer specializing in creating content to improve public awareness of health topics.

According to this view, lifelong abstinence is the one and only way to deal successfully with a drinking problem. Although moderation may be a good starting point for many drinkers, it alcohol abstinence vs moderation is not the best approach for everyone with a drinking problem. People with severe drinking problems generally find moderation difficult to maintain and often do better with abstinence.

Levels of Care in Drug and Alcohol Rehab Programs

Research indicates that while the likelihood of avoiding heavy alcohol consumption is highest in abstinence-focused individuals, those with moderation objectives were also able to reduce their alcohol use. An individual’s ability to avoid excessive drinking is also influenced by other factors such as past alcohol consumption, as reflected by an alcohol use disorder diagnosis. Depending on the number of criteria met, an individual will be diagnosed with mild, moderate, or severe AUD. Individuals with severe AUD often find that in the long term, sobriety is the most achievable goal for them. Keeping alcohol in your life in a healthy way can be really challenging, especially for people who have exhibited more severe drinking habits and patterns. These health risks can be severe, and some even contribute to alcohol-related mortality rates.

There are various ways that individuals can take advantage of face-to-face gatherings, very much like what is offered by moderation management, or they can settle on online experiences that can fulfill the same need in a more adaptable way. On the site of the program, one can find aides that show how much alcohol is permissible as well as commentaries that allow individuals to examine their battles and find recognition for their accomplishments. This short video includes some of the benefits you could experience just by drinking less alcohol and outlines some of the programs and resources available to you if you decide to manage your alcohol with the help of the AMP. » Individuals who received moderation training substantially reduced their alcohol consumption on average by 50-70% and, as a result, significantly reduced health and social problems related to their drinking. Do you want to cut down on your drinking rather than give up alcohol completely? Dr. Washton offers personalized concierge care that can help you learn how to moderate your drinking within safer limits.

Is Moderating Drinking Possible for Alcoholics?

It’s fairly well-established that, if you look at society at large, people who drink a moderate amount are the healthiest in a number of ways. It is difficult for our Allies member to see her son struggling to make friends while at the same time using alcohol to overcome his social anxiety. By following the CRAFT principles of effective communication, she is able to step back and allow him to experience the negative consequences of his drinking, and to focus on rewarding his positive choices. This is easier said than done, but her loving support and commitment to CRAFT is guiding him in the right direction. This moderation management plan is designed so that the identity of any given person remains a secret, and participation in the scheme is not a requirement to continue for the rest of one’s life.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich John and his team believe their research shows that the lower life expectancy for those who do not drink alcohol compared with those who do can be due to other high risk factors. One of the best ways is to remember why you are making the commitment. The consequences of using should be remembered, not with a guilty conscience, but in a realistic portrayal of why you have chosen sobriety. Also to be remembered are the experiences and feelings that come from abstinence. First of all, as mentioned earlier, don’t make a commitment until you are firm in your path to sobriety. Second, realize a commitment to sobriety is not a commitment to be forever perfect.

Risks Of Moderate Drinking

Today, there is a solid push for help on the drug front that can help some difficult consumers in checking their liquor misuse in moderation management. Naltrexone has supported in repressing the ideal high numerous consumers get from liquor misuse, and accordingly, it causes numerous to lose the longing to look for it. » Follow-up studies as long as 8 years showed that the people who were most successful in maintaining moderate problem-free drinking were those with less severe alcohol problems at the start. Many of those starting off with more severe problems succeeded with moderation for a period of time, but eventually chose to abstain from alcohol completely. The key premise of any approach is that moderate drinking is a practical and reasonable goal for those people who face less severe drinking issues.

This team of researchers undertook to compare self-identified members of Moderation Management with self-identified members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). They looked at demographics—who attends AA versus who attends MM—as well as the relative severity of the drinking problems in the two groups. “Harm reduction” strategies, or moderation techniques, set more flexible goals in line with patient motivation. These goals differ from person to person and range from total abstinence to reduced alcohol consumption.

Michael Houstoun bows out triumphantly at Waikanae in the company of the Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society

Michael Houstoun and the Amici Ensemble (led by Donald Armstrong)
The Amici Ensemble: Emma Barron and Anna van der Zee (violins), Andrew Thomson (viola), Ken Ichinose (cello), Oleksandr Gunchenko (double bass), Bridget Douglas and Kirstin Eade (flutes), Douglas Mews (harpsichord)

J S Bach:
Trio sonata from The Musical Offering
Partita No 4 in D, BWV 898
Brandenburg Concerto No 4 in G, BWV 1049
Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 9 February, 2:30 pm

The first concert in the Waikanae Music Society’s 2020 season welcomed the audience with a ‘Full House’ notice at the door: meaning that around 500 filled the hall. It was a celebration of Michael Houstoun’s long career: his last concert for the society which has hosted him regularly since 1986. He played in the company of Donald Armstrong’s Amici Ensemble which has also been a major and very popular contributor to Waikanae’s concerts. It was an inspiring combination.

The programme that was devised was particularly thoughtful and appropriate, serving, somewhat incidentally perhaps, to display a range of Bach’s instrumental music not all of which is well known. One solo piano piece and Bach’s best known keyboard concerto, both featured Houstoun at the piano. Giving Houstoun time to catch his breath, the ensemble, including Douglas Mews at the harpsichord, played the Trio Sonata from The Musical Offering for flute, violin and continuo and the fourth Brandenburg Concerto.

Attention to the RNZ Concert crisis
But before they began president Germana Nicklin spoke briefly about the crisis that was upper-most in everyone’s thoughts – Radio New Zealand management’s intention to get rid of RNZ Concert, firing almost the entire staff, and giving its FM transmission network to a new programme devoted to what the management thinks are the tastes of young people, let’s say teen-agers. She invited Elizabeth Kerr to the stage, the former manager of Concert FM, as it used to be called (no longer if Thompson and Macalister have their way: it’ll be Concert AM, only some of the year and with no obtrusive human voices). And Elizabeth read a passionate message from Wilma Smith, founding first violin of the New Zealand String Quartet and later, Concertmaster of both the NZSO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. There was no mistaking her dismay and anger at the barbaric plans.

The Trio Sonata
But to the music at hand. The Trio Sonata played by Armstrong, flautist Bridget Douglas and cellist Ken Ichinose, with Mews with the harpsichord continuo, was one of the many varied pieces of The Musical Offering that Bach sent to Frederick the Great in 1747. It’s entitled Sonata sopr’il Soggetto Reale (‘Sonata on a Royal theme’). The trio sonata form was common enough at the time and Bach wrote a number of others, but this one is unusually technical and makes formidable play with the theme that the King had invited him to use for an elaborate fugue. In fact it matched the gravity of our situation, sombre, in a minor key, in spite of the generally happy character of the flute.

The performance set the benchmark for the concert, as all the pieces were played without the introduction of any unwritten decoration (as far as I could tell), or the imposition of any inappropriate emotional character beyond what is intrinsic to the notes on the page. And this continued to characterise the two following Allegro movements. It offered proof of their ability to sustain the serious character of the King’s theme. Bach’s seriousness pf purpose seemed to be illuminated in the extended Andante movement, spacious and thoughtful.

Keyboard Partita No 4 
Houstoun’s choice of the fourth of the challenging keyboard Partitas was a further mark of the concert’s serious yet deeply satisfying character. Each of the six partitas has three movements in common (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and a Gigue in all but one case), along with a wide variety of other movements. No 4 is the only one that opens with an ‘Overture’ and it presented Houstoun with a formidable opportunity to express what I suppose can only be discovered in the greatest classical music. And that undoubtedly illustrates what great art can offer to those who have troubled to cultivate and familiarise themselves with the musical material that composers like Bach used to explore the depths of human experience. Nevertheless, the fugal character of the Overture’s second part avoided undue complexity and was the more rewarding for that.

Houstoun seemed to have discovered how to handle the most interesting and revelatory aspects of each subsequent movement. In some ways the second movement, Allemande, is both the longest and the most elaborate, with a subtle change of mood following pauses at the end of each paragraph. Longer pauses occur in the slow Sarabande and though it’s not a slow movement that plumbs the profundities of the Chaconne of the second violin partita, Houstoun managed to suggest a depth that made a singular impression.

The Gigue struck me as a particularly rewarding movement in Houstoun’s hands, with fugal elements and episodes for the left hand alone that led to complex polyphony.

Brandenburg Concerto No 4
All players arrived on stage to play the fourth Brandenburg concerto, with Douglas Mews again on the harpsichord, and others as named above. Each of the six Brandenburgs is different; No 4 has the character of a concerto grosso, featuring a group of three (or so) solo instruments (two flutes and Armstrong’s violin) and the balance (‘ripieno’), a small core of strings and harpsichord.

As with the Trio Sonata, the sound of the harpsichord didn’t project very well. While it was often audible in the earlier piece, among a larger number of modern instruments in the Brandenburg concerto, it failed to make much contribution. Nevertheless, the first and third movements were particularly lively and entertaining. The Andante might have been on the slow side; perhaps better described as careful and studied, ending with slow chords that introduced the last movement. The splendid fugue was particularly effective, shared interestingly among the three solo instruments. Donald Armstrong enjoyed an impressively virtuosic solo passage towards the end.

Piano Concerto in D minor 
Bach’s keyboard concerto, No 1 in D minor, really does demand performance on the piano and I felt that its choice as Houstoun’s last performance for Waikanae again demonstrated his serious and intelligent approach to this occasion and to music generally. In spite of the many great performances of the popular and spectacular piano concertos that comprise part of the symphony orchestral repertoire, Bach’s No 1 in D minor is a singular work that seems to be rarely played, though I remember clearly a performance, my first, unsurprisingly, in the old Concert Chamber of the Town Hall (it shocked me that it was replaced by a smaller space in the shape of the Ilott Theatre). It was, perhaps, in the 1950s (the pianist and the orchestral ensemble I can’t recall). Its seriousness and power impressed me then just as this performance did on Sunday.

All the instruments contributed with distinction, as they had in the Brandenburg, often playing in unison, without a great deal of fugal or contrapuntal writing. It’s widely considered a major preliminary step towards the piano concerto that emerged in the second half of the 18th century, the piano no longer just a polite member of the ensemble but a striking solo contributor. Towards the end there’s a striking dialogue between piano and cello and a virtuosic cadenza.

As with the performances of the three previous works, the most striking characteristic was the sense of integrity and honesty with which all players handled the music: no straining for ‘Romantic’ colours and emotions: just the notes in the score played with honesty and faithfulness.

This was a distinguished and momentous concert in which every aspect had been carefully studied and prepared. I hope that Michael Houstoun will be able to reflect on the occasion with as much gratitude and pleasure as the audience which, at the end, rose in its entirety to its feet.

 

Save Radio NZ Concert: sign a petition and write letters

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

We gather there are several petitions out there that seek to protect Radio New Zealand Concert, its integrity, even its survival to all intents and purposes.

Here is the one that’s recommended:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/community_petitions/paul_thompson_and_willy_macalister_at_radio_new_ze_keep_rnz_concert_on_fm_and_retain_their_presenters/

This of course covers the bare bones of the issue.

Of even more importance is the writing of letters that deal trenchantly with other associated issues.

It needs to be asked how it comes about that the positions of chief executive and the head of music of RNZ  have been filled by people with no evident experience in public broadcasting, and with no knowledge of one of the most important art forms that underpins civilisation: the great music that has stood the test of time and which ranks alongside other great art – literature, painting, sculpture, architecture…

And as I asked in the earlier post, who has been responsible for appointing a board, none of whose members seem remotely interested in or qualified to manage the presentation, promotion and dissemination of great music.

The more letters that reach the Prime Minister (as Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage) and Kris Faafoi (Minister of Broadcasting), the better. Faafoi claims that we, the public, don’t want him to be interfering in the administration of RNZ!). Really? If he doesn’t concern himself with this, the most serious crisis to have arisen since the threat in the 1980s to have advertising on Concert FM, just what does he do to earn his stipend in the portfolio?

Bear in mind the knife-edge situation of the Government as we approach the election: the threat to abandon support for the Labour Party which I’ve heard expressed by a number of people in recent days, should cause the Government pause for thought, if nothing else does.

 

The 7 Best Blockchain Development Companies in 2024

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

best blockchain companies

In either case, there has yet to be a killer app that has made the case for blockchain as a core part of the future of business and technology. This index tracks companies around the world that are focused on blockchain development, cryptocurrency innovation and cryptocurrency mining hardware. For investors looking to capitalize on the exciting potential of this technology, blockchain exchange-traded funds (ETFs) let you easily invest in hundreds of companies pursuing blockchain-based strategies. They are forward-thinking and assist clients who want to secure business technology products using blockchain distributed ledger and innovative contract protocol.

best blockchain companies

Since being founded in 2018, Agora has raised £12.5m worth of equity investment, in 3 funding rounds. The company is also currently piloting its Syndicated Bond platform, with early users now able to trial the software for live transactions. The company’s existing clients include corporates, financial institutions, and both commercial and central banks.

Version Control in IP of assets

Its business accounts support 29 currencies, as well as cryptocurrency liquidity and foreign exchange (FX). Firms can also open multi-currency accounts, enabling the use of up to 10 currencies. BCB Group’s clients include industry leaders Bitstamp, Circle, Galaxy, Gemini, Huobi and Kraken.

And just because its crypto-obsessed CEO, Jack Dorsey, left in November to devote all his time to Block (see page 68) doesn’t mean corporate Twitter is forsaking its claim to the decentralized future. Twitter is doubling down on creator tools, like tipping other tweeters with bitcoin and letting users display their NFT collections as profile pictures—for a fee. The contracts, stored on the Atomyze blockchain, help industrial firms like Umicore, Traxys and Glencore track the origin and environmental bona fides of their metals and make it easier to adjust inventory levels. Unintended policy cancellations are a big problem for insurers and often occur when a customer underpays or forgets to pay a premium.

The Best Blockchain Development Companies in 2024

Creators sign up on the intellectual property blockchain platform to patent their work. As the copyrights and patents evolve in their lifetime, digital assets also produce several versions of themselves. To simplify the process, a blockchain protecting intellectual property is brought to use. Technology makes it possible to develop ownership records to track ownership status and the usage of rights. Since blockchain works on a time-stamped, immutable chain of data and information, it fits perfectly in the process of tracing. This has not been unnoticed by IP registries and government agencies like the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), which is looking into the potential of blockchain IP protection.

Companies within the industry include financial technology (fintech) companies, cryptocurrency miners, and manufacturers of blockchain technology. A. Blockchain can protect intellectual property by providing a decentralized, transparent, and tamper-resistant platform for recording and verifying ownership of creative works. Blockchain establishes indisputable proof of creation and ownership through features like immutable ledgers and smart contracts. It enables instantaneous and global registration of intellectual property, eliminating the risk of unauthorized use or disputes. Coinbase hosts one of the most used crypto exchange platforms, where over 100 million users can buy, sell and store assets from cryptocurrency to NFTs.

Labrys – Top Blockchain Firm for Launching NFTs

We mine digital assets because we believe blockchain is more than just another disruptive technology. It’s an opportunity to reshape our institutions to be more fair, inclusive, and sustainable. We self-mine with a 100% carbon neutral footprint, and to date, 55-60% of our electricity best blockchain companies comes from sustainable power, including solar, wind, and hydro. Launched back in 2000, Zfort is the oldest company to join the list of our ‘watch-out-for’ in the blockchain technology in 2018. Zfort started in the industry by focusing on animation, 3D graphics and web design.

The blockchain ETFs on our list invest in dozens or even hundreds of stocks, providing plenty of diversification in a single fund. It’s a buzzy, exciting technology, but blockchain is only in the early stages of development. Cryptocurrencies have been making dramatic headlines for their outsized gains and tremendous losses, but more pragmatic blockchain applications have had a much lower profile. Blockchain is a digital ledger https://www.tokenexus.com/ that records data—frequently cryptocurrency transactions, though it can handle any type of data—and distributes it across a broad network of computer systems. The VanEck Digital Transformation ETF (DAPP) is a passively managed fund that was launched in April 2021. DAPP tracks the performance of the MVIS Global Digital Assets Equity Index, which holds the stocks of companies active in cryptocurrency and blockchain.

Now the community is focusing on a simpler approach, called Proto-Danksharding, which streamlines layer 2 rollups. The goal is to eventually support up to 100,000 transactions per second using this new approach. One way to approach this is to ask for a rough estimate of cost during an initial consultation. Businesses may also request quotes or proposals from multiple development firms so that they have pricing and services to compare. In our reviews, we look for development firms that have worked on well-known projects or with major companies.

best blockchain companies

Portfolio.Having only been in existence for a relatively short period, SETL already has a rather impressive portfolio of services. As of September 2017, SETL launched IZNES the all-European platform used to keep fund records. Alongside OFI AM, SETL processed the IZNES blockchain transactions for selected clients. There are also smart contracts, which are simple programs stored on the blockchain used to automatically exchange data. A Sawtooth library enables developers of custom distributed ledgers to pick and choose which pieces of Sawtooth they use in their application. IBM Blockchain Transparent Supply is designed to help enterprises improve traceability in supply chain management.