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Neville Hall  

a furred tail upon nothingness

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2008
for solo oboe

Ben Hoadley (Composer)  

After a while only the green of the grass is left

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2007, r. 2009
for solo flute

  • Programme Note

    This short work for solo flute was written in 2007 and is dedicated to my Grandmother, Mary Kingma (1917 – 2005). It was inspired by (but is not necessarily a direct depiction of) part of a poem that she wrote (published by New Zealand Art Press in the anthology New Beginnings in 1986), the last line of which I have used as the title.

    They are waiting for me, the sparrows.
    And so I throw the crumbs and watch.
    So busy, so quick, so hungry.
    After a while only the green of the grass is left.

    Ben Hoadley

  • Availability

Neville Hall  

and, out of nothing, a breathing, hot breath on my ankles

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2000
for solo flute

  • Programme Note

    Much of the surface of this piece inhabits an area on the brink of silence. This is an extremely unsafe area for the performer, because he or she constantly risks losing the sound altogether. It is hoped that the soft dynamic levels focus the listener’s attention on the microscopic shifts in timbre, pitch and loudness that are the central material of the composition. Below the surface, rather than employing an overall unifying structure/process, several processes are active simultaneously, and much of the composition is the result of these processes tearing at each other while competing for priorty. There is an “organic” process of growth, that conditions the placement of events in time, as well as the pitch and timbral relationships between these events. Superimposed on this structure is a spectral analysis of the title of the piece, taken from Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”, which also impacts on the placement of events and their internal shape, effectively “damaging” the underlying organic organisation. The third main layer relates to pitch organisation and is based on an analysis of Edgard Varese’s “Density 21.5”. This layer is of particular importance for the “grace note” figures that abound, figures which exist “outside” the main body of the composition, but give important structural clues relating to both the first and second processes mentioned above. “And, out of nothing, a breathing, hot breath on my ankles” was written for, and is dedicated to Ales Kacjan.

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Michael Norris  

Badb

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2002
for flute and piano

  • Programme Note

    Badb (pronounced ‘badhv’ where ‘dh’ is a voiced fricative, as in ‘these’) was one of a trio of war-goddesses from Irish legend. She assumed variously the guises of a beautiful woman, an old hag, and a carrion crow. Her manifestation in the latter form was an omen of death. Before a battle she would appear in anticipation of the carnage, and as the battle took place, would flit around the heads of the warriors. Afterwards, she would feed on the corpses strewn across the fields. Like the other two battle-furies, Macha and the M’rr’gan, Badb was both sinister and sexual; she prophesied the end of the world, the fall of the gods and an endless reign of chaos. There are three distinct types of material in this piece, portraying the three juxtaposed personalities of Badb: the sinuous, seductive syrensong of sing-flute representing the mysterious, beautiful femme fatale who befriended the Irish warrior C’ Chulainn, then lured him to his death; the unearthly shrieks and battle-cries of the old hag, which were said to arouse fear and dread in the living; and the hideous crow, pecking at the flesh of the slain with bloodied maw. Much of the piano’s harmonic structure is derived and interpolated from chords representing the crow in Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux, while the notes B, A and D feature prominently through the piece.

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Kit Powell  

Chance Piece for Oboe and Tape

Duration: 07' 30" Year: 2008, r. 2009
for oboe and tape

David Hamilton  

Dreamwaltz

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

  • Instrumentation
    At least Grade VII or VIII difficulty
  • Programme Note

    This short work began from the simple idea of a waltz-like piece. The music is intended to suggest a dream-like atmosphere, perhaps a half-remembered memory of something that happened long ago. Other than that, there is no specific programme to the music. Musically the piece is based around three principal ideas: the interval of a minor third (often heard in a simple oscillation of pitches), a rising arpeggio of a minor 9th chord, and a more angular melodic fragment developed from the opening bars. The music opens with music marked ‘pensively’, then becomes ‘a little more decisive’. The climax of the work features pitches at the top of the flute range, and the final section is marked to be played ‘like an afterthought’. ‘Dreamwaltz’ won the New Zealand Flute Society’s composers’ competition for a test piece for their 2006 conference.

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Samuel Holloway  

en abyme

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2007
for solo flute

  • Programme Note

    Works en abyme bear within themselves miniature reflections of themselves. The term mise en abyme, borrowed from the language of heraldry by André Gide, is described by Lucien Dällenbach in Le récit spéculaire (1977) as an ‘aspect enclosed within a work that shows a similarity with the work that contains it’. The French word abyme (a variant spelling of abîme) means ‘abyss’, suggesting ideas of depth, increasing velocity, descent, infinity, interiority, spiraling, vertigo… These suggestions are manifested in this work in nested descending scales that increase in velocity and occurrence, though as material feeds back on itself these structural markers are increasingly obscured.

    en abyme was commissioned by Mette Leroy as part of her Doctor of Musical Arts performance and thesis research, and was premièred by Leroy, under the auspices of the Karlheinz Company, at the University of Auckland in May 2007.

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Pieta Hextall  

Four Short Pieces for Clarinet and Saxophone

Duration: 05' 40" Year: 2006
for b flat clarinet/bass clarinet and soprano saxophone/tenor saxophone

Ryan Youens  

Guardians of the North

Duration: 06' 20" Year: 2007, r. 2009
wind orchestra

  • Programme Note

    Guardians of the North is a work for wind orchestra commissioned by the Opononi Summer School. It was written to celebrate the school but also to introduce and/or make more familiar New Zealand music to the participants. Because of this, it was written in an accessible yet challenging style in the hope to encourage interest in new music, and more specifically, New Zealand music, which lacks music for this timbre.

    The summer school is set in the Hokianga, where New Zealand’s first Maori, and second European, settlements were established. Since then, no other place in New Zealand carries such rich and storied past. Maori legend has it that two taniwha, Arai-te-uru & Niwa, were situated at the entrance of the harbour to protect it from invading waka. Arai-te-uru was placed on the south head, and Niwa at the north head. They would stir the waters and lash out at the waka, ceasing their entry. These two taniwha were the … Guardians of the North.

    This work was funded jointly by the Opononi Music School and Creative New Zealand.

  • Availability

Yvette Audain  

Hazine (Treasure)

Duration: 09' 00" (can vary) Year: 2008, r. 2009
for solo saxophone

  • Programme Note

    Egyptian Ella and The Sheik of Araby have always been two of my favourite tunes to play as a jazz clarinetist. I have also dabbled in gypsy-influenced musics with a couple of friends in the folk instrumental band Doris. These influences have certainly come through in this piece, but mainly it was my work in music education that inspired me to write a piece with a Middle Eastern flavour, as among the many students with whom I am blessed is a tenor saxophonist from Turkey. Hence my choice of title, Hazine – pronounced ‘ha-ZEE-nay’ – being a Turkish word.

    I have also been working to expand my own modal knowledge, in this piece choosing to explore several darker modes (locrian, for example) with which I am not as familiar as I am with the more common ones (such as dorian). Another scale I have chosen to feature is a Turkish makam.

    Yvette Audain

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