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Kit Powell  

Father's Telescope

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1989
a playful music theatre piece for singer, speaker and tape about power and submission

Pepe Becker  

In Queen Beatrix's Garden

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1992
For two sopranos (with finger cymbals) and electric bass guitar

David Farquhar  

Magpies and other Birds

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1976
For vocal quartet

Helen Fisher  

Taku Wana - The Enduring Spirit

Duration: 37' 00" Year: 2002
for two mezzo sopranos, Kai-karanga, taonga puoro (traditional Maori instruments), flute/piccolo, bodhran, string quartet

  • Instrumentation
    one of the mezzo sopranos needs to be familiar with performing Maori waiata.
  • Programme Note

    This chamber work, composed in 2002, is based on the music drama of the same title, with music by Helen Fisher, Maori composition by Wi Kuki Kaa and lyrics by Lauris Edmond. This shorter work for two sopranos, kai-karanga, string quartet, flute, bodhran and Maori instruments was produced for a CD on the Atoll label (ACD 203). This work focuses on some Maori and Pakeha women’s stories surrounding the events of the 1843 Wairau tragedy. These are stories of compassion, which have a resonance for New Zealand today, showing a way forward for reconciliation and racial harmony.

  • Availability

Carol Shortis  

Tangi

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2007
for a cappella SSAATTBB vocal ensemble

  • Programme Note

    The poem Tangi was written by Megan Simmonds, a New Zealand poet who lives in the Bay of Plenty. I wanted to explore the use of vocal overtones in this piece; they have often been connected with the spiritual or other-worldly in the various cultures where the technique is practiced.

    A tangi (or tangihanga) is a Māori funeral ceremony. The opening material, and position of the singers, is influenced by the Māori powhiri, where visitors are received onto the marae in a customary series of calls and songs by the tangata whenua, each reciprocated in turn by the visitors.

  • Availability

Anthony Ritchie  

The Charge of Parihaka

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1994
for vocal sextet SSATBB

Gillian Whitehead  

The Virgin and the Nightingale

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 1986
five songs for voices

  • Instrumentation
    sop, m-sop,A,T,Bari,B choir or sextet. Optional melody instrument - flute. If one soprano has a virtuoso high light voice that could undertake the flute line, the upper voices in 1 and 5 can be rearranged between soprano 2 and alto.
  • Programme Note

    The Virgin and the Nightingale was commissioned by Jones and Co with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council, and first performed by The Song Company in 1992. The poems are taken from Fleur Adcock’s collection of translations of mediaeval poems published by Bloodaxe Books as The Virgin and the nightingale, with kind permission of author and publisher. The five songs all focus on birds; the flute part in Love’s Agent is a (transposed) transcription of a nightingale song. The settings are for SSATTB choir. The songs can be performed as a set or separately; some of them are suitable for choir.

  • Availability

Pepe Becker  

Virgo One

Duration: 04' 00" Year: 2000
For vocal quartet (SATB)

Juliet Palmer  

W is for


for clarinet, trumpet, drum set, keyboard, violin, double bass and 2 sopranos

  • Instrumentation
    clarinet in B flat; trumpet in C; drum-set - bass drum, snare drum, hi hat, 3 tomtoms, 2 muted cowbells, woodblock
  • Programme Note

    Recently my curiosity was sparked as to the origins of Maori action songs – a hybrid form combining traditional movements, borrowed Western melodies and Maori lyrics. It seems that I owe my encounter with them to an enthusiastic physical education specialist in the late 1940’s who introduced them into the public school system along with Maori children’s games, noting that they were “exceedingly good for the body of the pakeha” (non-Maori). W is for is my response to that early time spent dancing and singing in a language which we were never taught to speak. The text is an excerpt from a Maori-English dictionary. It begins at waka (canoe) and passes through wakainga (true home, far distant home) and warawara (yearning), arriving finally at wareware – forget, forgotten, forgetful. The final line comes from the Belgian singer Jacques Brel’s ballad “On n’oublie rien” – you forget nothing.

    Juliet Palmer

  • Availability

Pepe Becker  

When Will We Know

Duration: 03' 00" Year: 1986
For soprano solo, two sopranos and two altos