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David Hamilton  

Concerto Grosso No.2

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2004
for two violins, cello and string orchestra

  • Programme Note

    The title of this work may seem unexpected as there is no ‘Concert Grosso No. 1’ in my list of works! However I’ve always considered my 1985 work for strings and percussion ‘Well Done, Mister Bach’ to be a concerto grosso. That work features the leaders of all five string parts as a ‘concertante’ group. In a more traditional Baroque manner, this work features just the leaders of the first and second violin and cello sections as the soloists. My intention with the work was to write something in the manner of a Baroque concerto grosso, drawing inspiration from typical styles of the period. Mixed in are my own musical and compositional preferences, so that in the end the piece might be described as ‘Baroque meets minimalism’. I finally gave into the temptation to give the three movements titles. The title, ‘Prelude’, of the first movement is a little ironic as it is longer than the remaining two movements combined. The second movement, ‘Air on a Shoestring’ suggests a rather brief, perhaps truncated air, in this case, a piece which fails to return to its home key. The final movement is in the manner of a Baroque fugue, I knew that university paper would finally come in useful one day!. ‘Concert Grosso No. 2’ was commissioned by the Music Department of St Cuthbert’s College in Auckland, and follows a commission from them the previous year for ‘Whisper to me’ (for choir, strings and percussion).

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Chris Watson  

Jangeran

Duration: 09' 30" Year: 2005
for orchestra and gamelan

  • Instrumentation
    2222; 4331; gamelan; perc; strings gamelan: suling, kendang, ceng ceng, gongs, 2 gangsa, 2 calung
  • Programme Note

    Jangeran seeks to bridge the musical gap between East and West: a Balinese melody is appropriated by the Western orchestra and is recast in a range of Western contexts. At various points a gamelan ensemble, embedded in the Western orchestra, emerges and reasserts ownership of the musical source materials while at other times the two bodies combine to explore new and strange syntheses of culture, movement and soundworlds.

    Jangeran was commissioned and premiered by the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra in Jakarta in May 2005, conductor Edward Van Ness, with further performances in Osaka and Tokyo, Yogyakarta and Jakarta.

  • Availability

Chris Adams  

Mad Cow Farmers' Disease (Jazz Band version)

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2011
An arrangement for Jazz Band by the composer of the original for mixed ensemble of 9 players.

  • Instrumentation
    Jazz Band: 2,2,1;4;4; Pno, Drums, Bass
  • Programme Note

    When Silencio Ensemble asked me to write the original piece, it was suggested that I write something inspired by or relevant to Canterbury – one possibility being a piece inspired by the landscape. In a funny kind of way, Mad Cow-Farmer’s Disease is inspired by the landscape – going to a Canterbury river and seeing the signs that say “Do Not Swim” or another where cows are loose in the riverbed and cow shit is all over the place.

    It is inspired by dry riverbeds surrounded by farms with pumps constantly irrigating the land – the premise being that any ounce of water that makes it to the sea is wasted. These same farmers, self-titled “environmentalists,” use hypothetical science to justify their wanton destruction of the natural environment.

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Ross Carey  

Medicine Bundle (No. 4)

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2005
for any number of pianists playing in unison

  • Programme Note

    A medicine bundle is part of the traditional teachings and practices of the First Nations peoples of North America. The title of the first Medicine Bundle piece, which I wrote as one of the many invited composers worldwide to contribute a piece for pianist Ananda Sukarlan’s Concerts for Bali commemorating the Bali bombing of October 2002, was my response to an article published in the Toronto Star, where an elder of the Six Nations Reserve of southern Ontario spoke of a “medicine bundle” found within each of us; a place of healing and transformation which we can tap into in times of strife and need. I envisaged the bundle in the three previous Medicine Bundle pieces as consisting of a bundle of notes from which the performer(s) can freely bring their own sensitivities, experiences and responses to the work’s realisation. Unlike my other medicine bundle pieces however, this Medicine Bundle does not allow for different realisations of the score – instead, the focus is on the different voices “speaking together” in a common tongue.

    ‘Medicine Bundle’ was first performed in a version for solo piano by Ross Carey at the Dunedin Composers’ Group concert in August 2005.

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Ray Twomey  

Music for Harpsichord (Opus16b)

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1998
for harpsichord

Ross Carey  

Seven Little Pieces

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1998
for a melody instrument

  • Programme Note

    Seven little melodies for a melody instrument, concluding with a Gigue.

    Several of these pieces received their first performance in a lunchtime recital of contemporary pieces for solo bass clarinet given by Andrew Uren at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in October 2000.

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Chris Adams  

Strata

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2011
for solo lever harp with loop pedal

  • Instrumentation
    Could also be performed with several harps
  • Programme Note

    When Helen initially asked me to write her a lever harp piece, one option that arose in discussion was that of using a loop pedal. This created many possibilities for the piece, but also created limits in the way I could use certain material. After the expansive opening, Strata uses multiple layers built up of patterns played over top of each other. The constantly repeating riffs drive the piece, and the melodic material weaves around this, sometimes in sync and sometimes purposely against the underlying patterns. Strata was written while I was Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago in 2011.

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Gillian Whitehead  

Voices of Tane

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1976
Seven piano pieces for children

  • Programme Note

    ‘Voices of Tane’ (1976) was the first piece I wrote on my first return to New Zealand after nine years away. It was written for my sister, Joyce Whitehead, to play at the Registered Music Teachers’ Conference in Auckland that year. A series of seven short piano pieces, written with children in mind (although some of them are difficult for children to play), was written for my godson, Kit Boyes. There is little to say about the pieces themselves except that the last repeats the first, the third has to do with birdsong, the fifth with the wind, and the sixth consists of nine ideas that the pianist plays in whatever sequence she or he wishes.

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Alex van den Broek  

White and Pink On Light Red

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 2008
for chamber octet