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Gillian Whitehead  

Arapatiki

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

Thomas Goss  

Ecstasy of Flight

Duration: 09' 50" Year: 2002
tone poem for two violins and string orchestra

  • Programme Note

    Ecstasy of Flight captures a moment in the life of a child who longed for a companion in her isolated life in the precise middle of nowhere. She was visited by a powerful dream, of wings, the curling of the wind in the cloud-tops, the perfect peace of the blue land of the sun, and the shape of the world as one great, majestic song. That was the moment in her life from which she could look back later as an adult composer and say that it all began.

  • Availability

Keith Statham  

Flora

Duration: 05' 28" Year: 2003
for clarinet, flute or violin, piano

Clare Maclean  

In the year that King Uzziah Died

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2003
for unaccompanied choir (SATB)

David Hamilton  

Karanga

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2005
for SSAA and TTBB choirs and conch shell

  • Programme Note

    A karanga is a call which begins the Maori ceremony or welcome, the powhiri. Traditionally the karanga is performed by the women. It is an indication that the visitors (the ‘manuhiri’) should begin to move forward on the marae.

    “The start of he karanga indicates to a visitor that they are free to approach their hosts across the marae atua (sacred space directly in front of the meeting house). The call also clears a spiritual path for the ancestros of both the visitor and host and meet and partake in the ceremonial uniqueness of the powhiri.” (from www.newzealand.com)

    The karanga also includes acknowledgment of ancestors and may allow the visitors to identify where they have come from.

    Although my work picks up on some of these traditional karanga elements, it is not intended to be a representation of an actual karanga or powhiri. The text is drawn from several sources, and includes some typical traditional karanga calls. In the music, the female voices represent the hosts and the male voices represent the visitors, although at times (for purely musical reasons) this distinction is blurred.

    The women’s text is founded on the call of “Haere mai!” (“Welcome!”), and the men’s text of “Karanga mai!” (“Call!”). THese two phrases recur throughout the work, often underpinning other texts. Although the two groups often call back and forth to each other, at times the two groups also perform together, super-imposing their respective texts. Towards the end of the work the two groups come together and the work ends with all singers presenting the same text.

    Musically, the work begins by using rhythmic ideas which suggest traditional chant. No actual traditional chants are used however. A feature of a karanga is the unbroken line of sound which passes from singer to singer. Much of the remainder of the work uses a rich palette of tonal harmonies often moving slowly from chord to chord. The piece includes a part for conch shell player, an instrument also associated with calling to visitors and welcoming them.

    Karanga was written for The Graduate Choir and their conductor Terence Maskell

    David Hamilton

  • Availability

Michael Norris  

Machine Noise

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2006
a "landscape prelude" for piano

Robbie Ellis  

Maeve

Duration: 05' 30" Year: 2007
for piano and tape

  • Programme Note

    In September 2007 at the University of Auckland, I attended the launch of Spectrum 4, a book of short stories. These stories were the end-product of 24 writers’ work in a third-year English course, ‘Writing the Short Story’, convened and tutored by Witi Ihimaera the previous year. The first story in the book was Leila Austin’s Shadow People.

    Leila’s writing – particularly the evocations and contrasts of shadow vs light; the harshly real vs the safely imaginary; and a flighty imaginary companion called Maeve – inspired me to set this piece for solo piano. The solitary nature of the piano and its evocative qualities of shade and shadow suits it, in my mind, to accompanying past recollections.

    To accompany the piano part, Leila and I pared down and paraphrased her original story to a small number of lines, which I recorded her speaking. The words on tape come from a disembodied storyteller in the present remembering her past. The piano part accompanies and complements the speaker’s thoughts and memories.

    At the root of this piece is the interval of the second, which is found in two guises – major and minor. The major second opens and closes the piece. While it often has dissonant qualities, here it is not strongly dissonant and is used in a very still and suspended state. This interval represents the idea of shadow and the comfort the storyteller found (and finds) in it.

    The interval’s other guise is the minor second, a much more jarring harmony. This evokes light, the opposite of shadow, and in particular the sharp fluorescent light of Bars 59-66. Towards the end of the piece there is interplay between the minor and major seconds, and there are even places where the minor second is a consonant interval (e.g. Bars 77-80).

  • Availability

Diana Blom  

Modern Tango

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2006
for solo piano

  • Programme Note

    Modern Tango is one of five tangos, Tango Cinco, for solo piano. Sydney dance teacher Ian Murphy tells how the Argentinean tango began in the ghettos of Buenos Aires, with dance steps grouped in 5s and 7s which worked across the music’s phrasing. However, when taken to Europe, extra dance steps were invented to fit into groups of 8s. I heard a modern tango, with its faster tempo, performed at Darling Harbour in Sydney one Sunday afternoon, and this Modern Tango explores the grouping of 5 within this faster tempo. The piece employs voice leading, shifting harmonies and a long melody. The first performance was given at Sydney and Nimbin (November 2006) in which two composers, Michael Hannan and I, played our own piano works.

  • Availability

Thomas Goss  

Pale Sun Over Cold Land

Duration: 05' 15" Year: 2001
String orchestra with erhu solo (may also be played by solo violin)

Eric Biddington  

Partita No. 3

Duration: 07' 18" Year: 2006
for clarinet in B flat