Search Music:

I’ve admired John Psathas’ music for years, for its incredible sense of energy, its ability to defy categorization, and its cultural pluralism. With 4BY4 (his first non-pitched percussion piece), John delivers on all counts … and then some. If David Weckl, Christopher Lamb, Steven Schick and Giovanni Hidalgo – all percussion virtuosi from widely different genres – were to have a jam session, I can’t help but think that it would sound something like 4BY4.

Each of the four players plays a drumset-like set-up; one player has two snare drums a hi-hat, a tambourine, and a cymbal, another has two congas and a hihat, and the remaining two have tom-based set-ups. However, what binds these four seemingly disparate voices is the kick drum, which all four drumsets have. At times, these four drums pound a relentless beat in unison, and at others they’re split into complex rhythmic counterpoint.

It is this, in part, that makes 4BY4 such a great piece and a perfect fit for this album. John manages to take culturally different instruments, each with different playing techniques, and link them together with a common element – the kick drum. It is cultural pluralism at its best, with each voice maintaining its unique sound and identity, but seamlessly integrated into a common whole.
- Omar Carmenates

• John Psathas: 4BY4; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Omar Carmenates: The Gaia Theory CD  Year: 2012 

  CD
  
  $33.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

I did intend to sit down and compose an orchestral epic. I really, really DID, honest. Could I help it that as soon as I made that decision, the saxes started up a 1920s tea dance in my computer?! Only it’s not all sweetness and light and good ol’ days, in fact it sometimes gets a little murky in there, to say the least…

• Audain: A Charleston Kick With Steel Caps; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $22.00
  • • Quantity:

• Audain: A Charleston Kick With Steel Caps; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $26.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Two works by Yvette Audain 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION 2010: Stop writing dishonest programme notes.

This work was conceived in the abstract and does not relate to human experience. It does not illustrate the composer’s state of mind, he having suddenly found himself awake in the middle of the night, unable to control his thoughts. While the experience of insomnia, especially when suffered over consecutive nights, can be physically and emotionally crippling, at times the abundance and insistence of multiple streams of unwanted thought (unruly Beta waves) can be, if not pleasurable, then certainly fascinating. This piece does not seek to illustrate this through music, nor does it sonically pose this question: why does the brain seize control of the consciousness and produce such a plethora of unwanted activity that sleep is made impossible and the host becomes miserable?

At times, certain thoughts seem to somehow rise above the melee of insomniac thought and become quite focused and of seeming import, however inane these might seem in the cold light of day. This is not portrayed in the music by infrequent parings-down of texture and emergence of single, insistent motivic ideas. The music doesn’t describe how such thoughts soon get swallowed up as the jumble of thoughts returns and the victim adjusts position once again, glancing desperately at his or her clock radio and resolving hopelessly to try to make yet another attempt at deep breathing and sheep counting work.

The composer could claim that the work is about these things, but that would be a lie; he no longer wishes to construct programme notes after the act of composition that conform to some conceivable extra-musical agenda.

This version of this work is the first of a number of versions, with another swapping cello for viola and another as a solo guitar piece currently projected.

The work was requested by Dylan Lardelli and is dedicated to this increasingly mythic musician.

• Watson, C.: about nothing...really; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $21.00
  • • Quantity:

• Watson, C.: about nothing...really; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $21.00
  • • Quantity:

• Watson, C.: about nothing...really; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $16.00
  • • Quantity:

• Watson, C.: about nothing...really; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $16.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Chris Watson: about nothing...really; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Chris Watson: about nothing...really; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Chris Watson: about nothing... really 

  CD
  

This work for clarinet quintet in three movements was written following time spent in the north of Scotland, during which I visited the remote and desolate places that my family left behind when they emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand in the 19th Century. Although the music is not intended to be strictly descriptive, the image underpinning the work is that of an infinite shore that stretches from the line of steep cliffs at Badbea overlooking the North Sea, around the world to the rocky southern shores of Aotearoa New Zealand. The work draws on the tonal colour and extremes of pitch that are possible in the clarinet, and the extraordinary platform of sound of the string quartet.

• Webster: An Infinite Shore; computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $25.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Webster: An Infinite Shore; computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $20.50
  • • Quantity:

• 5 Works by M Louise Webster 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

Antonyms of Trust is a poem about water; about how our water is being stolen and degraded, about the many New Zealand rivers with signs saying “do not swim – may cause illness” or the dry riverbeds surrounded by farmland with constantly pumping pivot irrigators. “Once upon a better time, the poor man’s wine flowed beneath our feet and bubbled up between the streets…”

• Adams, C.: Antonyms of Trust; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $21.50
  • • Quantity:

• Adams, C.: Antonyms of Trust; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $25.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• The APO Composers' Workshop 2010 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

9 Miniatures based on Art Works in the Wallace Art Collection and on display at the TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre at Pah Homestead in August 2010.

• Chris Adams: Art Miniatures - downloadable PDF 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $26.00
  • • Quantity:

• Chris Adams: Art Miniatures - hardcopy score & part 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $30.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Chris Adams: Art Miniatures; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Luca Manghi: Quays  Year: 2012 

  CD
  
  $27.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

On May 25 2010, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, also known as “Three Strikes” legislation, sponsored by David Garrett, the ACT Party, and the Sensible Sentencing Trust, and supported by the National Party, under Prime Minister John Key. The law imposes mandatory maximum sentences on offenders who commit three “Strike” offences, removing judicial discretion. An almost identical bill was passed in California in 1994. California’s crime rate remains 11% above the national average, its prison population has increased to nearly 200,000, and its recidivism rate is the highest in the United States.

• Taylor: Attention:; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:

• Taylor: Attention:; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $22.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• The APO Composers' Workshop 2010 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

When American poet Walt Whitman first published his collection Leaves of Grass in 1855, it was notable for its sensual imagery in an era when such carnal expression was considered immoral. On the eve of his 191st birthday, Whitman’s evocative prose was sung in the language of passion.

• Smythe: De La Cuna que se Mece Eternamente; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $8.50
  • • Quantity:

• Smythe: De La Cuna que se Mece Eternamente; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  

• Mark Smythe: De La Cuna que se Mece Eternamente 

  Digital sound file - MP3
  
  $4.00
  • • Quantity:

• Mark Smythe: De La Cuna que se Mece Eternamente 

  CD
  

• Baroque Voices: Brother Sun, Sister Moon  Year: 2011 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

eight pieces for wind quartet was inspired by Ligeti’s extraordinary, dramatic work Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet, and my eight pieces uses this work as a model, where movements alternate between slow-moving, cloud-like textures and jittery, virtuosic interjections. The fragments of melody are constantly reaching outwards, the tense, at times nightmarish, harmonic language constantly straining, edging towards the elusive octave. Within the twelve-tone framework I wanted to create as much diversity and flexibility as possible, always keeping a tension between motion and stasis. Each piece is a kind of elaboration of the same melodic idea, a blueprint that is constructed differently each time, like seemingly unrelated episodes in a dream. Below is a short poem that I think embodies the miniature nature of each piece and the work as a whole.

miniature

if a dream came to you
you might catch it, hold it,
sculpt from it an elaborate

memory, the husk of a rushed
feeling, the miniature
interior of a moment

- alex taylor

• Taylor: eight pieces for wind quartet; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:

• Taylor: eight pieces for wind quartet; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $15.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Taylor: eight pieces for wind quartet; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:

• New Zealand Music for Woodwind 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

Ha! Hoo! Oh… hey! Omm…

• Ellis: Ha! computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $15.50
  • • Quantity:

• Ellis: Ha!; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $18.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Robbie Ellis: Ha!; video 

  Media on Demand | External - video
  

• Robbie Ellis: Ha!; audio 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Chamber Vulgarus - Autumn 2011 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• New Zealand Composers Concert 

  CD
  
  • Borrow