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This music was originally commissioned by Richard Campion for the New Zealand Players’ production of Ring Round the Moon by Jean Ahhouil, translated by Christopher Fry. In the second act there is a ball taking place offstage and demanding a large number of dances which are specified in the text.

The music was first recorded on acetate discs by a ad hoc orchestra led by Alex Lindsay; these small recordings were then played through speakers for the production, sounding very loud to the cast but filtering out more gently to the audience. At the end of the long national tour, the cast knew the music very well and suggested to me that I should do something with it.

The result, some years later, 1957, was a suite of nine dances first performed by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra. This rapidly became my most performed piece and was commercially recorded by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra in the 1960s, a recording still available today from Kiwi Pacific Reords.

Ashley Heenen, through the NZ APRA Committee, commissioned an arrangement for full orchestra for the NZ Youth Orchestra to take on a tour of Europe and China in 1975. This version was shortened to six dances by leaving out the first three numbers. The music has also been used for a ballet, The Wintergarden, choreographed by Arthur Turnbull for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company – this version included a tenth dance not in the 1957 Suite. Since 1975 two further version have been commissioned: Waltz Suite (1989), for string orchestra (five dances) for the Nova Strings, and an arrangement of the original Dance Suite (1992) for violin and piano (nine dances) for Isador Saslav.

• Farquhar: Short Suite from Ring Round the Moon; computer-set 

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• Farquhar: A Short Suite from Ring Round the Moon; computer-set 

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• Farquhar: Short Suite from Ring Round the Moon; computer set 

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• SOUNZ Orchestral 1993 

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• New Zealand Composers  Year: 1995 

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• McKenzie: Alice in Wonderland - a ballet suite; computer-set 

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• McKenzie: Alice in Wonderland; computer-set 

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• Music by Lachlan McKenzie 

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The full title of this work is Aliens disguised as Elvis kidnapped my grandmother’s appendix in a previous life after having been sucked through a black hole singularity on a Sunday afternoon picnic in the park with Aunt Jemima Puddleduck while discussing the simultaneity of states of sub-atomic particles, K. 666.31. The work is also known as The Enigma of Arrival, the purpose of this piece is to portray the epic struggle of Life and Death on a microcosmic and macrocosmic scale.

• Davidson: Aliens Disguised As Elvis...; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Angels born at the speed of light; facsimile 

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• Whitehead: Angels born at the speed of light; facsimile 

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Away with the Fairies is a string of kitsch songs about fairies and pixies, animals and children. They are linked by recitatives which, like the songs, include quotations from other composers’ music.

• William Dart: Song Book; computer-set 

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This dance theatre project was commissioned to celebrate the New Zealand Women’s Suffrage Centennial, and explores a range of historical and contemporary issues. It is based on documents written by Kate Shepherd and was choreographed by Susan Jordan.

• Fisher: Bone of Contention; facsimile 

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• Fisher: Bone of Contention (excerpt); facsimile 

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• Helen Fisher: Bone of Contention  Year: 1993 

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• Palmer: Cypress; computer set 

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• Palmer: Cypress; computer set 

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• Biddington: Dance Sketches; facsimile 

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• Biddington: Dance Sketches; facsimile 

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• Farquhar: Fives; facsimile 

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• Farquhar: Fives; facsimile 

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• Farquhar: Fives; facsimile 

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The Love Sonnets of Michelangelo I wrote for Michael Parmenter, with whom I worked on a programme entitled Between Two Fires (also included was a dance-theatre work I created collaboratively with Michael, using his voice as well as his body, with imagery extracted from the diaries of Franz Kafka.) At the time I was focused on different styles of melody, having just completed my Five Melodies for Piano. Inspired by the lovely voices of some of the then current students in our School of Music, I felt that women’s voices gave the expressive quality I wanted, as well as providing a useful ‘cover’ for the overtly homo-erotic tenor of the texts. The original production used film, shot by my good friend Bayley Watson, showed the dancer’s prostrate figure, swathed in bandages. As the performance unfolded the cloth was gradually cut and pealed back by hands belonging to an old man whose face we never saw, the intended metaphor being of the sculptor cutting away marble to reveal the male form that he sensed already existed within the stone.

The work has since had other performances that have discarded the theatrical elements, most successfully when each setting is prefaced by a reading of the poem in translation.

These settings of some of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s most personal sonnets articulate the anguish of love and desire, as well as the despair of old age. The musical style combines the theatricality of Italian bel canto with the direct expressivity of folksong.

• Body: Love Sonnets of Michelangelo; facsimile 

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• Jack Body and Michael Parmenter: Love Sonnets 

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• Baroque Voices: How Great is the Pleasure   Year: 2001 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 6 - Composer Portrait: Jack Body  Year: 2003 

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