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Claire Cowan  

'Whetu-Rere' - The Sea Lion and the Comet

Duration: 22' 00" Year: 2007
for voice and mixed chamber sextet with taonga puoro

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John Drummond  

A Beleaguered City

 Year: 2002
an opera in six scenes to a libretto by Jeremy Commons

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Michael Bell  

A NZ Journal: Songs for Solo Voices

Duration: 45' 00" Year: 2009
12 poems by NZ poets, 3 poems for each voice: S, A, T & B

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Jonathan Besser  

African Legacy

Duration: 03' 00" Year: 2004
for acoustic guitar, keyboard, percussion, bass guitar, drums, taonga puoro (Maori instruments) with Maori and English vocals

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Gillian Whitehead  

Alice

Duration: 36' 00" Year: 2002
an eight movement monodrama for mezzo-soprano and orchestra

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  • Instrumentation
    3343, 3310, harp, timp., 3 perc., strings, mezzo-soprano
  • Programme Note

    In 1909 Alice Adcock, a lively and adventurous young woman from Manchester, was on her way to New Zealand. She was 23, and had recently developed TB, for which there was then no cure. Somehow she persuaded her widowed father to let her travel alone to the other side of the world in case a healthy climate would save her life. (It worked – she lived for another 50 years). The family kept her entertaining letter describing shipboard life, and a few postcards from her have also survived, but most of what we know about her time in New Zealand comes from her father’s letters to her, of which he kept copies, or from family tradition. On her arrival in New Zealand, Alice went into service, travelling widely, much to the consternation of her father. As housekeeper (and the only woman) on a farm in Makarora (a remote settlement on Lake Wanaka) she became pregnant to an unknown man, but was ‘rescued’ by marriage to a local farmer, Charles Pipson, shortly before the birth of her daughter. In 1911, her beloved father died; in 1912, Alice and Charles had a son and the following year, pregnant again, Alice took her children back to England to visit her family. Tragically, while she was away, her husband died suddenly of typhoid fever. Alice hurried back to Makarora to claim her inheritance, but left the two babies with her brother Sam and his wife (who were shortly to emigrate to New Zealand) and took only her eldest child, the illegitimate one, with her. This outraged her sisters-in-law, who saw it as an insult to their dead brother; they sent her away from the farm empty-handed. Once again she had to take a housekeeping job, this time in the North Island. In 1914, Alice and her brother’s family met up again, and Alice began a new life. (Fleur Adcock – abridged) The music of Alice is text-driven, ranging between a language at times extremely simple, as was the basic musical language of the settlers, and at times quite complex, evoking a storm at sea, or the unease of the settlers in a new environment, or Alice’s reaction to the problems which beset her. The piece is held together by various referential motifs. The initial idea, which perhaps suggests the instability of the sea, is also present in the bell-like sounds marking Charles’ death, music associated with a storm at sea is later associated with mental stress, while music suggestive of the movement of shipboard lice later underlies Alice’s traumatic encounter with her sisters-in-law.

    There are eight sections, which often merge into one another: 1. in a letter to her father, Alice describes shipboard life; 2. in New Zealand, she compares her past life and hopes for the future; 3. a dialogue between father and daughter, expressed through their letters; 4. in Makarora, Alice discovers she is pregnant; 5. Alice hears of her father’s death; 6. in England, she learns of her husband’s death; 7. back in Makarora, Alice is turned away by her sisters-in-law; 8. turning her back on the South Island, Alice looks forward to her new life with her brother’s family in the north.

    While writing this piece, I was drawn again and again into the thought that, although this is a true story, set in a particular place at a certain time, it has the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here. Our forebears, or we ourselves, have crossed the seas to begin a new life, with unforeseen and unimaginable difficulties and felicities, whether ten years, a century or a millennium or so ago.

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Gillian Whitehead  

Almost an Island

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2005
for soprano and piano

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  • Programme Note

    ‘Almost an Island’, a phrase which refers to the Otago peninsula, is the title I’ve given to a short set of haiku written by peninsula poets, which I set for voice and piano as a wedding present for my then neighbours, Breffni and Dave.

    Rain blows on windows plastered with new leaves it’s spring again (Eleanor Koch)
    Golden pendant blossoms bright against blue spring sky beckon tuis (Eleanor Koch)
    Gleaming white across Arapatiki three spoonbills fly towards us (Gillian Whitehead)
    Aramoana pathway to the wide ocean memories remain (Kay Sinclair)
    Fiery rata circled by glitter almost an island (Kay Sinclair)
    Track winds past pine trees tangled vines scratching bare skin sharp smell of gorse flowers (Fran Bolgar)
    Low pressure warning on the macrocarpa thirty herons swaying (Gillian Whitehead)
    Kereru wheeling soaring and plummeting bounce now on tree-top (Joyce Whitehead)

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Colin Gibson  

Always there's a Carol

 Year: 2001
a carol for unison voices and keyboard accompaniment.

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Gillian Whitehead  

Arapatiki

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2004
a "landscape prelude" for piano

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Sarah McCallum  

Aspiration's Meaning

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2004
for voice, piano, small string ensemble, horns, tabla and percussion

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

At water's birth

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2008
for piano trio

  • Instrumentation
    violin, cello, piano (some preparation required); all performers required to speak

    Piano preparation: the strings between c’’’ and a’’’ need to have a flat metal object laid on top to achieve a bright, jangly ringing sonority (especially from mm 26-37). This/these to be removed by the pianist in the section from m 45.

    The three strings F, G, A flat, should have firm rubber wedges between them to create a dull thuddy sonority (for the section at m42), but with a still discernible pitch
  • Programme Note

    At water’s birth is a meditative, ritualistic work, whose sonic palette includes prepared piano sonorities and some vocalising from the players, including whispering, spoken words and whistling.

    The pushing out of the boundaries of the conventional instrumental sounds is something I have employed in other works such as the whistling and knocking on the piano lid in small blue for piano and the bell and tamtam playing in Ring True. The meandering sections of the music suggest a relationship with the forces of water, its depth, currents and undercurrents and there is a sense of ritual in some of the chant-like rhythms.

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