The NZSO’s Shed series is one of the orchestra’s gestures that seeks to attract new audiences. You stay out of conventional venues, you avoid any of the trappings of a forbidding classical music concert which finds the entire audience in white tie and tails and ball gowns; there are no rows of comfortable seats. Instead, just a few dozen seats with backs, a lot of padded benches scattered around... read more

What an excellent idea it was of Chamber Music New Zealand’s to invite viola virtuoso Jennifer Stumm here to perform with Wellington’s Te Koki Trio! – her presence enabled a richly varied programme to be performed with a unique distinction in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre, a programme that’s currently on tour throughout the country. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Stumm currently holds Professorships of viola studies in institutions both in Vienna... read more

Such a cornucopia of sound, image and incident, with projected images and robotic contraptions playing an integral part in the proceedings! One certainly sensed that something out of the ordinary was being enacted here in the Michael Fowler Centre, although it must be said that, right from the very beginning, in the foyers outside the auditorium was that familiar “buzz” of expectation which we’ve come to expect accompanying Orchestra... read more

Every Stroma concert I’ve had the good fortune to attend has pushed back my frontiers regarding what I’d thought of as viable and coherent musical expression, and by use of techniques and/or media that I might have previously regarded somewhat removed from “musical” realms. This “giving voice” to unconventional objects and means could be seen as taking one’s listening back to a time when music existed only as natural... read more

This was the kind of programme whose content and presentation couldn’t have done a better job of warming the cockles of both audience hearts and sensibilities, having already drawn our attention via the concert’s title to the evening’s delightful and characteristic seasonal ambiences. Choral items naturally enough made up the lion’s share of the presentations, but by way of contrast and variety we heard two songs for baritone with... read more

Behold, the 2019 Adam Troubadours! – a name that suggested something adventuresome and “here-and-now”, performers whose defining characteristics would give their music-making real distinction – and so it proved, in a concert for Chamber Music Hutt Valley that disarmed one’s listening by the act of its performers simply surpassing themselves as the evening ran its course. The above are young string musicians selected from those attending Adam Summer Schools... read more

Michael Stewart and the Tudor Consort certainly got their presentation “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” off to a properly gruesome start with the music of a composer who’s now generally known to have been a murderer, Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa – in fact, we in the audience were firstly “treated” to a fairly “no holds barred” description by Michael Stewart of the circumstances and salient details of the... read more

Stroma is a mixed chamber music ensemble drawn from musicians of the NZSO. It performs contemporary experimental music. This programme included music by New Zealand, American, Irish, French, and Icelandic composers, but in particular, it honoured the 80th birthday of John Rimmer, one of New Zealand's most iconic composers. The programme started with fog horns, recorded in San Francisco Bay. A brass sextet of two horns, two trombones and two... read more

Though having just tut-tutted elsewhere over the NZSO’s somewhat loose “title” attached to its most recent concert, I’m much less inclined towards adverse comment regarding the NZSM Orchestra’s publicity legend  for ITS latest presentation, “Darkness and Light”.  It’s a reasonably apposite description of the moods of what was being played at the evening’s concert, conveying something of the music’s range and impact as was performed, here brilliantly and most... read more

Good Music in Sheds The “Shed series” of concerts were a new enterprise for the NZSO last year, when there were three concerts of music that was a bit off the beaten track and in an atmosphere unfamiliar to traditional audiences, though essentially classical rather than popular or rock music; perhaps the word 'crossover' might here apply. Last year, it was suggested that they would appeal to audiences aged under... read more