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This piece was inspired by a most mundane and unremarkable occurrence that you may well ignore – like a flick of lights. Was it a signal, or was it accidental. If it wasn’t an accident, what would have happened if I responded. Maybe something wonderful, maybe not. Was it meant for me? Was it meant for anyone? Could things have gone sour? All these things plunge through the mind, but no one will ever know.

But even after it is shrugged off, the bitter sweet sound of opportunities lost sing on.

A Flick of Lights is in a single movement primarily for solo bass clarinet, but with two other hidden parts for effect. The hidden parts (clarinet and soprano) can be included in the programme (as in first performance) or excluded from the programme (as in second performance) if a surprise for the audience is desired. Hidden parts should be or should sound distant.

• Young, A.: A Flick of Lights; computer-set 

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This album was inspired by the poem “To L.H.B.” by Katherine Mansfield that was the first poem set.

• Bell: A NZ Journal: Songs for Solo Voices; computer set 

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• Bell: A NZ Journal: Songs for Solo Voices; computer set 

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• Michael Bell: To L.H.B.; audio 

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In 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War, Canadian band the Guess Who released the song American Woman. The album of the same name became their first U.S. Top Ten hit and first gold album. The group performed for President and Mrs. Nixon and Prince Charles at the White House. (Pat Nixon requested that American Woman be dropped from the set list.)

In recomposing American Woman I was thinking of two wars: the Iraq war and the strange war against the body waged by the American beauty industry. The war in Iraq costs over $2 billion per week while Americans spend more than $15 billion per year on cosmetic surgery. In 2004 nearly 12 million surgical and non-surgical beauty procedures were performed in the U.S., including more than 290,000 eyelid jobs, 166,000 nose jobs, 478,000 liposuctions and 334,000 breast enhancements. In The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report, Susie Orbach and Nancy Etcoff found that only two percent of women feel comfortable describing themselves as beautiful.

American Woman has been covered by Lenny Kravitz, Krokus and the The Butthole Surfers, among others. This version was commissioned by Motion Ensemble with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.

• Palmer: American Woman; computer set 

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• Palmer: American Woman; computer set 

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• Palmer: American Woman; computer set 

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• Buchanan: An Ocean Between Us; computer set 

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• Buchanan: An Ocean Between Us; computer-set 

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• Buchanan: An Ocean Between Us; computer-set 

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Camlot, a collaboration between Glenn Colquhoun and Gillian Whitehead, is a response to a visit by ten artists on the Breaksea Girl, skippered by Lance Shaw and Ruth Dalley, to Dusky and Doubtful Sounds in Fiordland, and particularly to a trip up Camelot, the river that flows into Gaer Arm in Doubtful Sound. Glenn’s poems, cryptic and spare, relate to old Chinese poetic forms, and the cycle traces the poet’s travelling up the river, and, changed by what he learns, his return to the open water. The titles of the poems draw on imagery very apparent
on this journey.

One thing that was made very apparent on that journey was the extent of the degradation of the environment, because of the depredations of deer, goats, rats, possums and other pests, which have made the forest a silent place, where biodiversity is acutely threatened.

The first performance of Camelot took place in St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin on 8th October, 2008, during the Otago Festival of the Arts. The performers were Janet Roddick (voice), Emma Sayers (piano) and Ben Hoadley (bassoon).

Both the performances and the journey to the sounds were devised as a fund-raiser by the Caselberg Trust, which is raising money to purchase the Broad Bay house of Anna and John Caselberg, for use by resident artists.

• Whitehead: Camelot; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Camelot; computer-set 

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• Gillian Whitehead: Camelot 

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• Gillian Whitehead: Camelot 

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• Gillian Whitehead: Arapātiki CD  Year: 2012 

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The “stations of the cross” are traditionally 14 depictions of the final hours of Christ’s life, each with associated devotions. They are particularly associated with the Catholic Church although other Christian denominations follow similar rituals during Easter week. The object of it is to make a “spiritual pilgrimage” to each important event and place of Christ’s suffering and death.

Canticle 5 was commissioned as part of an arts project promoted by St Heliers Presbyterian Church for Easter 2008. Visual artists were invited to prepare a response to one of the stations, and composers were asked to provide a musical response. My ‘station’ was number two – Jesus receives the cross.

In wanting to write a work incorporating voice, my starting point was a text. I decided to use the biblical text that follows on from the story of Christ’s appearance before the governor, the placing of the crown of thorns on his head, and the mocking. Although John’s gospel refers to Christ carrying the cross by himself, other gospels record Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross behind Jesus. In Luke’s gospel it is recorded that a large crowd of people followed, mourning and lamenting. Christ turns to the crowd and tells them not to weep for him, but to weep for themselves and for their children, because terrible days are to come. Those with children will wish they had never given birth.

I set just the first line of Jesus’ speech. It is turned into a lament which repeats the same words over and over at progressively higher pitches and with an increasing intensity in the accompaniment. The oboe weaves it’s path through the texture, sometimes commenting on the vocal line, sometimes at odds with it. The relentless tread of the music suggests the steps of Christ on his way to Golgotha.

Musically the piece draws on the few chords which appear in Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the beginning of the chorus Hail, hail King. Much of the harmonic material is derived from the tonic and dominant harmonies of D minor – often superimposing the two chords. The final bars of the piano part are a fragmented version of the opening bar of the choir part from that chorus.

• Hamilton: Canticle 5; computer-set 

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In the middle of 2002, Tim Cummings, an American who had been living in New Zealand for some years, returned home and, with his friend Ringo, embarked on a road-trip from Florida to Los Angeles. Along the way he e-mailed his friends a series of haiku poems (sixteen in total) that related his coast-to-coast experiences of a land that, although his own, he had come to feel like a stranger in. From the lethargy and obesity of Florida’s residents, to the disturbing cruelty of an animal park tour guide in Louisiana, to the beautiful but oppressive landscape of the desert, the depraved glitz of Las Vegas and the polluted haze hanging above Los Angeles, Tim’s haiku, though necessarily brief, said much about the country from which Western popular culture draws so much.

I began the task of setting Tim’s words to music as momentum was gathering for the American-lead war on Iraq. Don’t Mess With Texas is a view – admittedly through a distant lens – of an essentially insular people, whose outward gestures, driven by self-interest and an unconscious belief in the superiority of their culture, often take on menacing forms. The many style quotations should not be interpreted as hammy representations of American stereotypes portrayed with music, but rather should reflect the sometimes dangerous consequences of unbridled patriotism and of ignorance of matters global. That said, Don’t Mess With Texas deals not only with America’s human population and alluded to socio-political-environmental matters, but with the beauty of its natural interior, where a redemptive musical language is able to emerge from the urban chaos.

Don’t Mess With Texas is dedicated to Tim Cummings, the sort of open-eyed American the world needs more of. The work was premiered by *gate*seven in May 2003, conductor Ewan Clark, soprano soloist Madeleine Pierard.

• Watson, C.: Don't Mess with Texas; computer-set 

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• Watson, C.: Don't Mess With Texas; computer-set 

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• Selected Works: Utting, Watson, Cree Brown 

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• Chris Watson: Nacelle and Don't Mess with Texas  Year: 2003 

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This work was a ‘top secret’ commission, premiered at a well-kept surprise birthday party for Bruce (earlier a pupil of, as well as later married for some years to, the composer).

Aidan Lang head of NBR NZOpera was MC for the evening, which was generously hosted by Jack Richards and attended by some seventy of Bruce’s friends, family and professional colleagues. The piece was received with acclaim (no critics invited!)

This is third McLeod song cycle to be set to poems by Janet Frame. It is also the most difficult, the vocal part receiving little support from the fairly independent piano accompaniment. (Note: it is largely beyond the scope of amateur performers, though certain gifted adult students may be able to cope with some of the songs.)

For the occasion a limited edition of five copies only of the score was printed (presented to Medlyn, Barnes, Richards, Greenfield & McLeod) with a specially designed cover by Roger Joyce, well-known designer and partner of Margaret Medlyn.

• McLeod: From Garden to Grave; computer-set 

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• Jenny McLeod: From Garden to Grave - hardcopy score  Year: 2011 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 12 - Jenny McLeod: Vocal & Choral Works  Year: 2011 

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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.

• Whitehead: Hinetekakara; computer set 

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• Whitehead: Hinetekakara; computer set 

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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.

• Whitehead: Hinetekakara; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Hinetekakara; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Hinetekakara; computer set 

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• Gillian Whitehead: Various Works 

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