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• 'Whetu-Rere' - The Sea Lion and the Comet  Year: 2007 

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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 

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• Webster: An Infinite Shore; computer set 

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• 5 Works by M Louise Webster 

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This song cycle for soprano and piano has texts by the composer in Maori and English.

“Awa Herea memorably evokes the physical appearance of symbolic significance of these braided rivers… cosmic weather-driven energy.” (Covell, Sydney Morning Herald).

“Its pace was shrewdly varied and the music encompassed a range of styles – from sung declamation to florid lyricism – without incongruity.” (Jack, Independent).

“The cycle displays all the characteristics of her [Gillian Whitehead’s] mature work. The vocal line is at once exultant and contemplative, the piano writing incisive or lulling; the formal shaping novel yet accessible. It is a memorable piece, filled with the energetic spirit of the natural world and finding through that spirit its own serenity.”

• Whitehead: Awa Herea; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Awa Herea; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Awa Herea; facsimile 

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• NZIAF: Gillian Whitehead Portrait; part 2 

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• Waikohu: Mere Boynton and Friends 

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• Tracey Chadwell's Songbook  Year: 1995 

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• Ears Wide Open Taringa Areare Education Resource CD  Year: 2000 

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In 1990 I attended the launch of Cilla McQueen’s new book Berlin Diary. This diary made a big impression on me, initially because it brought back memories of my own trip to Europe. I also liked the brilliant mixing of poetic and prosaic styles, and the vivid descriptions of people and places. Something else that impressed me was the strong contrast between the inhuman political situation in Berlin (the wall was still up) and the natural, peaceful beauty of Dunedin, New Zealand (Cilla’s and my own home town). A few months later the Aramoana tragedy (where a deranged gunman killed 13 people – Aramoana is a remote seaside township at the end of the Otago peninsula) changed that around. Cilla’s beautiful, almost ecstatic centrepiece in the dairy “O Aramoana” now took on a terrible subtext, and it seemed as if the inhumanity of Berlin had come to the remote beach community. A year later, the Berlin wall finally came down, and the unification of East and West Germany became a reality.

When Judy Bellingham approached me in 1991 to write a song cycle for her, I immediately wanted to set extracts from the Berlin Diary, to capture these layers of dramatic historical irony along with the essence of a marvellous text. In reality I was able to only set a fraction of the diary to music, and hence the title of my work – Berlin Fragments (which I would also like to think suggests the breaking of the Berlin wall into bits). After talking to Cilla about the work, I decided to make “O Aramoana” the heart of the work, around which somewhat shorter texts are clustered. Sections are often linked by a recurrent chord in the bottom of the piano (the dyad E-F), which I have imagined as a tombstone in musical terms. Framing the work are brief sections which convey the flight to and from Berlin (the “green below” being an unmistakable reference to a return to New Zealand).

The 23 minutes of this song cycle run continuously.

• Ritchie A.: Berlin Fragments; facsimile 

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• Bellingham, Dennis, Rawson: NZ vocal music  Year: 2006 

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• Celebrate Wellington Concert  Year: 2005 

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• Vector Wellington Orchestra: Celebrate Wellington  Year: 2005 

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Commissioned for the opening of the new National Library building in 1987, this work was the centre piece in a concert of New Zealand music which inaugurated the Library’s auditorium. Harris chose Alistair Campbell’s poetry as he has always enjoyed its vernacular quality. Included in the ensemble are some of Harris’ favourite instruments: soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and flugelhorn. Harris views this work almost as a kind of unstaged melodrama. As with his To the Memory of I.S. Totzka (2000), Dreams Yellow Lions was written in a period between work on his operas and acts as a substitute for the larger compositional form. Short instrumental interludes link the songs through various emotional states. “It’s all about memories and I always imagine an old man thinking about his younger days, dreaming away, getting old and becoming sick”.

• Harris: Dreams, Yellow Lions; facsimile 

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• Harris: Dreams, Yellow Lions; facsimile 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 4 - Composer Portrait: Ross Harris  Year: 1987 

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Written in McLeod’s second year of study at Victoria University, this piece shows influences of Benjamin Britten and David Farquhar. The text is a poem by W. S. Broughton, the older brother of one of her childhood friends. She was drawn to the poem because it expressed the disillusionment with religion she herself was experiencing at the time.

Being a student work, Epithalamia has been somewhat neglected by performers, and has only recently been ‘rediscovered’. The youthful composer’s impressive self-confidence, both in the expressive use of the voice and in the effective piano writing is obvious. (Programme note: Mark Jones).

• McLeod: Epithalamia; computer-set 

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• McLeod: Epithalamia; computer 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 5 - Composer Portrait: Jenny McLeod 

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Hineputehue translates literally as the woman of the sound of the gourd, and she is the Maori goddess of peace. The work was written in 2001, at the time of President Bush’s State of the Union address shortly before the invasion of Afghanistan, and suggests the fragility rather than the celebration of peace, particularly in a pre-European environment.

A number of instruments used in Hineputehue are made of gourds – the gourd, which carried food and water, is a symbol of peace. These include the poi awiowhio, a very quiet bird lure which is swung around the head, the tiny koauau ponga ihu or noseflute which ends the piece, the hue puru hau, a large gourd which is blown across its top opening and the gourd rattles played by the quartet. Two other wind instruments frequently made from gourds, the nguru and the ororuarangi, are also used. Other instruments are the putatara or conch shell trumpet, traditionally used for signalling, the pu kaea or war trumpet, a nguru niho paraoa or flute made from a whale’s tooth, the pumotomoto, associated with birth, and tumutumu (tapped percussion).

There is a similarity between the stringed instruments of the quartet and the gourds, in that they are made from plant material, with sound emitted through sound holes. Another link is the ku, the only stringed instrument known to Maori, which is a small musical bow played like a jaws harp (jews harp) using the mouth as a resonating chamber. The idea of ororuarangi, which can be translated as spirit voice (or double stopping in a different context) has had some influence on this piece as in the parallel movement of the strings.

• Whitehead: Hineputehue; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Hineputehue; computer set 

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• Whitehead: Hineputehue; computer set 

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• NZIAF: Gillian Whitehead Portrait; part 2 

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• Whitehead: Bright Silence  Year: 2002 

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• Gillian Whitehead: Puhake ki te rangi  Year: 2007 

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• War and Peace and Jack Winter's Dream - Incidental Music by Ashley Heenan 

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• Ashley Heenan: Orchestral Music  Year: 1996 

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• de Castro-Robinson: Len Songs; facsimile 

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• de Castro-Robinson: Len Songs; facsimile 

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• Premieres 2004, Volume 4 

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• de Castro-Robinson: Len Songs  Year: 2004 

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