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Samuel Holloway  

Austerity Measures

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 2012
for recorder, koto and guitar

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Helen Fisher  

Bone of Contention

Duration: 1h 20' 00" Year: 1993
a dance work for mezzo-soprano and ensemble

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Pepe Becker  

Cancer

Duration: 04' 00" Year: 2000
for soprano, alto, tenor and thumbpiano

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David Farquhar  

Duet

Duration: 04' 00" Year: 1972
for guitar and sitar

Score Sample
  • Programme Note

    Written in 1972 for my daughter Katherine. She was at the time learning the guitar and I was endeavouring to teach myself the sitar from the Ravi Shankar book.. In attempting to marry the two instruments, the piece inevitably borrows bits from Indian music: the drone, the modal approach and the association of drumming with sitar-playing (though the “drummer” here is the guitarist). It remains however, basically western in concept: it is fully notated, the mode is Messiaen’s mode 2, and the sitarist is required to stop the tonic drone during the middle section of the piece allowing the guitarist to provide three substitute chords – in other words, “modulation”!

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Shen Nalin  

Fatal Desire


opera for chamber ensemble with ten players

  • Instrumentation
    Korean instruments: daegum, piri, seanghwang, gayageum, percussion; Western instruments: clarunet in B flat, bass clarinet in B flat, guitar, violincello, percussion
  • Programme Note

    Fatal Desire – synopsis

    In exile upon a small island and in search of his idyll, a Chinese poet lives with his wife (Xiang Yu) and his lover (Qinger); the couple’s infant son stays nearby with a neighbour. Returning from a trip overseas, the poet discovers that Qinger has fled the ramshackle seaside batch the three of them share, apparently with another man. The poet immediately sits down to write a novel narrating the story of their love – a novel, in the poet’s mind, both for and by her. As has been the case in the past with his poetry, his novel is transcribed for him, word by word, by Xiang Yu. Scene Three of the opera, presents the poet’s account of his first sexual encounter with his lover, juxtaposed with Xiang Yu’s longing for her absent son. The opera ends with reports of the tragic outcome of the imminent departure of Xiang Yu also from their home – her murder at the hands of her husband and his suicide. – Duncan Campbell

    Scene three of the opera Fatal Desire has subtitled as “Bingbu Yaoyuan de Sinian”, “Diyi Ge Yue” and “Chu Yie”. It was first performed in Asia Pacific Festival 2007 at Te Whaea, National Dance and Drama Certre, Wellington, featuring Linden Loader (mezzo soprano), Wang Xing-Xing (soprano), James Meng (tenor), Daniel Shen (voice of the son), and directed by Sara Brodie with Gao Ping conducting the Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea.

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Philip Brownlee  

He rimu pae noa

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2009
for taonga pūoro (1 or 2 players), flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano

Score Sample
  • Programme Note

    Like many whakataukī, or traditional sayings, he rimu pae noa conveys a rich range of meanings. Literally, it describes seaweed set in motion by the tide. Metaphorically, it also refers the restlessness of a traveller, and the movement of a whole bed of seaweed in the same current alludes to a group of people working in harmony. This in particular has a strong resonance with the collaborative process from which the piece arose. The instrumental ensemble provides a framework, and a backdrop, for the improvisation of the taonga pūoro. At the same time it attempts to maintain its own identity, in conversation with the solo lines. Precisely specified gestural events are distributed in a flexible rhythmic framework,
    which aims at a balance between control and spontaneity. I am deeply grateful to Horomona Horo, for a richly rewarding collaboration, and to Richard Nunns, whose work over many years is a deep source of inspiration.

    Philip Brownlee

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Dylan Lardelli  

Hiki-Iro

Duration: 08' 30" Year: 2012
for solo Koto

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Gillian Whitehead  

Hotspur

Duration: 35' 00" Year: 1980
for mezzo soprano and chamber ensemble

Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    clarinet, clarinet/bass-clarinet, violin/viola, cello, percussion (marimba, 9 drums in high to low sequence, drum of fluctuating pitch, bass drum, 5 suspended cymbals, ching - Thai finger cymbals, bell tree, rasp, 2 woodblocks, 3 temple blocks, wood chimes)
  • Programme Note

    This monodrama for mezzo soprano and chamber sextet, commissioned by Northern Arts UK, tells of the 14th century North of England warrior Henry Percy (Hotspur), seen through the eyes of Elizabeth Mortimer, in a striking ballad sequence written by Fleur Adcock.

    Whitehead’s imaginative score combines exotic and arresting instrumental colours, a strong dramatic vocal line (often with flamboyant flourishes) and an admirable overall conception of the mood changes and tonal graduation of the work. (William Dart, NZ Listener)

    She has the rare gift of knowing when to us nightmarish vehemences and when to be utterly straightforward and calm. (Roger Covell, Sydney Morning Herald).

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Shen Nalin  

Hymn to the Virtue of Wine

 Year: 2002
for vocal ensemble with gu-zheng, sheng, and hu-qin

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Annea Lockwood  

Monkey Trips

Duration: 35' 00" Year: 1995
for chamber ensemble including non-western instruments and slides

  • Instrumentation
    2 wind, 2 strings, piano, 2 percussionists, non-western instruments
  • Programme Note

    Monkey Trips is based upon the Tibetan Buddhist metaphor of the six states/realms of being which we constantly recreate and assume to be reality, six “different kinds of projections or dream worlds” (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche). Each realm is associated with a particular instrument and the piece moves through them successively.

    The Heaven Realm (violin), realm of serenity and stasis in which the monkey dwells on her achievements, blocking out everything undesirable; the intrusion of another player draws her out of this solipsistic state and into dialogue.

    In the Human Realm (cello), realm of passion and intellect, the monkey becomes discriminating – exploring, comparing, reaching out to possess the pleasurable, but discovering that pleasure slips away and craving creates frustrations. However, the idea of unity emerges.

    Those frustrations impel a retreat into the Animal Realm (bass clarinet), away from intensity into the habitual, rooting around in a more limited world, clinging stubbornly to the safely familiar, whether painful or comfortable.

    Then a desperate feeling of starvation sets in, the realm of the Hungry Spirits (flutes); visions of open space and of plenty turn into deprivation. A thirsting for what monkey remembers she once had becomes insatiable. Always reaching out but never realising that in order to drink, you have to first open your throat.


    The Hell Realm (percussion): a feeling of being trapped in a small space, of struggling to control this self-created imprisonment. The more she struggles, the more solid grow the walls until rage is exhausted. Then the monkey begins to let go, and suddenly sees that the walls are self-created, the realms are self-created. She breaks through into open space.

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