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Gillian Whitehead  

"Aria" from Outrageous Fortune

 Year: 1998
for soprano, taonga puoro, flute, bassoon, cello and piano

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Lyell Cresswell  

Chiaroscuro

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2005
a "landscape prelude" for piano

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Douglas Lilburn  

Festival Overture

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1939
for orchestra

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John Rimmer  

Galileo

Duration: 1h 30' 00" Year: 1998
a chamber opera using for 6 singers, small chorus and 8 players, also using electroacoustic music and DVD of visuals

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  • Instrumentation
    Television newsreader (spoken voice), Nobelman (baritone), Castelli (tenor), Galileo (baritone), Boy/Angel (mezzo soprano), Three Priests (tenor/baritones), Heretic (baritone), Christina (soprano), Military Man (baritone), Sea Captain (baritone), Troubadour (mezzo soprano), Cardinal Bellarmino (tenor), Pope Urban VIII (bass baritone), Pope John Paul II (baritone), small chorus of townspeople; flute doubling piccolo, oboe, clarinet doubling bass clarinet, horn, piano, percussion, violin and cello. Electroacoustic music played through at least eight loudspeakers. DVD of visuals.
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James Gardner  

Given what we gather takes place

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2003, r. 2004
for clarinet and percussion

Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    can be performed on any of the clarinets; choice of percussion instruments left to performer
  • Programme Note

    This is the “permanent exhibit” from the work in progress called ‘given what we gather takes place’. The model for the whole work is that of a museum in which some exhibits are on permanent display, and others are brought up from the storeroom. In other words, some sections of music are always to be played, while others are chosen by the performers from a pool of material to present a unique exhibition for each performance. The percussionist’s instrumental collection is similarly assembled; some categories of instruments are specified while others are chosen by the percussionist with the added stipulation that some aspect of the instruments chosen must be unique to the location of the performance. The music of this particular “exhibit” alludes to, but does not use, folk-like material and is conceived as a playful sparring match between two friendly opponents. ‘given what we gather takes place’ was commissioned by Resonate Duo, to whom it is dedicated, with funding from Creative New Zealand.

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Lyell Cresswell  

Good Angel, Bad Angel

Duration: 1h 00' 00" Year: 2005
chamber opera for three singers and four players

  • Instrumentation
    mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone, baritone; clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, violoncello
  • Programme Note

    Markheim is a man at the end of his tether. What started as a robbery gone wrong has ended in a murder – a murder that seems certain to force him to kill once more. And then kill again. Trapped, he is made to confront circumstances that have brought him to this terrible crisis. Just at the moment a mysterious stranger appears – but it soon becomes clear that this saviour is not all he seems. Is he the devil driving to further temptation and inevitable damnation? Or an angel come to save him from himself?

    Loosely based on R. L. Stevenson’s macabre story, Markheim, a haunting story of guilt and redemption, Good Angel, Bad Angel is a chamber opera for three voices and four instrumentalists.

    SYNOPSIS: The opera opens in an old curio-shop where the owner and his daughter are having a row. She feels unappreciated by her miserly father and says she’d prefer to spend Christmas Day with someone who cares for her – her boyfriend. She storms out leaving the old man to his gold and silver. A knock at the shop door. The shopkeeper is reluctant to open, but realising it could be a potential customer, lets in the caller. It is Markheim, a small time thief. He claims he wants to buy a Christmas present for his girlfriend. The old man shows him his stock. When the old man’s back is turned Markheim kills him. Believing that there is a hoard of gold hidden somewhere in the shop, Markheim is now free to look for it. Another knock at the door. Two drunks are wanting to visit the old man. Markheim doesn’t answer and tries not to panic. Finally the drunks wander off. Quite unexpectedly, a complete stranger – the visitant – enters from the back of the shop. He offers to tell Markheim where the gold is hidden. Fearing the unknown, Markheim refuses to answer. The visitant tells him the old man’s daughter is coming back to the shop to apologise for her outburst. If Markheim is still here when she arrives, he will have to kill the daughter as well to cover his crime. A dialogue follows with Markheim realising more and more the hopelessness of his position. The visitant keeps reminding him that the daughter will be arriving very soon. Markheim insists the money will allow him to start a new life and in a high dramatic solo passage declares that freedom is within his grasp. The murder is one-off, he claims, and from now on his life will be on the straight and narrow. A knock at the door. It is the daughter. The visitant says Markheim will have to let her in. Then he will have to kill her. Markheim opens the door and tells her that her father is dead. At first she thinks the old man collapsed and that the doctor has been called. Then Markheim shows her the knife. Realising what has happened she sings a moving lament for her father and begs for her life. The powerful trio that follows is interrupted by a knock at the door. It will be her boyfriend. The girl starts to scream for help. For Markheim this is the end. Or perhaps a new beginning.

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Larry Pruden  

Harbour Nocturne

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 1954
for small orchestra

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Gillian Whitehead  

Hineraukatauri

 Year: 1999
duo for piccolo/flute/alto flute, and Maori flutes

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  • Instrumentation
    piccolo, C flute, alto flute. Taonga puoro: tumu tumu, karanga manu, putorino toroa, putorino maine, putorino nui, purerehua, pakunu. Taonga puoro parts mostly improvised.
  • Programme Note

    In the tradition of the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, Hine Raukatauri is the goddess of music and dance. She is embodied in the form of the female case-moth, who hangs in the bushes and sings in a pure, high voice to attract the male moths to her. Her hair is found as a fern, the hanging spleenwort, and her voice is heard in the sound of the putorino, an instrument known only in Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand). The putorino is an instrument that can be played in various ways – as a flute, as a trumpet and as a means of enhancing or altering the human voice.

    Hineraukatauri is written for two performers, one playing conventional flutes (piccolo, C and alto flutes), and the other for taonga puoro (instruments). The score features three different putorino, which, like all taonga puoro, (and also the songs and chants) have a small pitch range, rarely exceeding a fourth, which varies from instrument to instrument. Three putorino are used in this piece – one made of albatross bone and two of wood, and both the flute and trumpet voices are used. Other instruments used are a karanga manu (bird-caller), a purerehua (swung bull-roarer) and tumutumu (tapped instruments.)

    The flute player’s part is notated, but the music for the taonga puoro is improvised; there are areas when the flute player is encouraged to improvise with the taonga.

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Gillian Whitehead  

Hinetekakara

 Year: 2004
for kaikaranga, taonga puoro, flute, bassoon and cello

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  • Instrumentation
    Taonga puoro: putatara, putorino matai (wheke), pumotomoto, oriori, pupuharakeke (flax snail), pu kaea, nguru rakau maire
  • Programme Note

    Hinetekakara is the ancestress of Aroha Yates-Smith, the kaikaranga (singer) who provided the idea and the text of this piece. Hinetekakara lived on the shores of Lake Rotorua with Ihenga, her husband or father, an eponymous ancestor of the Te Arawa people, when the land was still being settled after the arrival of the Te Arawa canoe from central Polynesia. The four cadenzas, for bassoon, alto flute, flute, cello and bassoon, and bassoon link improvised sections, in which all the instruments participate. The singer initially invokes, accompanied by putatara (conch shell trumpet), the spirit of Hinetekakara, then addresses rituals following the death of her future father-in-law (with putorino), and then the birth of her son (with pumotomoto, an instrument used to assist at child-birth). A voiceless improvisation on pupu harakeke (flax snail), an instrument presaging danger, is followed by Ihenga’s anguished lament as he finds the murdered body of Hinetekakara by the lake, by the place named for her, Ohinemutu, meaning the end of the woman. Finally, she is farewelled as her spirit returns to the afterworld.

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

LEN LYE the opera

Duration: 1h 55' 00" Year: 2012

  • Programme Note
    LEN LYE the opera is based on the dramatic life of one of our most original artists. As an opera in the contemporary sense, it is a unique mix of music, poetry, theatre, dance, costumes, set design and film, with a cast of top national and international singers, musicians and performing artists. Eve de Castro-Robinson’s lively music incorporates jazz, dance music and other elements that reflect Lye’s art and personality.

    The opera tells the story of one of the most colourful and important artists to have emerged from New Zealand. Born in 1901, Len Lye grew up in this country, moving to London in 1926 to embrace the excitement of modernism and the Jazz Age. In 1944 he moved to New York and lived for the rest of his life in its bohemian art world. He gained a worldwide reputation for his films and sculptures.

    Along with his artistic triumphs, Lye experienced two contrasting marriages and ongoing battles with the art establishment. Despite these battles, Lye never abandoned hope or energy – he continued to struggle, to dream, to re-invent art – and to shock the orthodox with his views about art, clothing, politics and marriage.

    When he died in 1980, Lye left his art to the people of New Zealand. His animated films and kinetic sculptures continue to excite imaginations young and old, here and around the globe.

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