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also available for soprano and orchestra

One afternoon Margaret Medlyn and I sat across her kitchen table to discuss poems I might set as the basis of a song cycle for her. She produced quite a stack of New Zealand poems for me to consider: among the items in this pile was a slim, rather unassuming little volume by Alistair Campbell titled Galliploi & Other Poems. Whilst Gallipoli naturally conjures up powerful socio-historical associations for all New Zealanders, I was almost immediately drawn to the second set of poems in the book titled Cages for the Wind and decided to set the last five poems in the collection as a cycle. What struck me most, and still seems so fresh now, was Campbell’s talent for evoking deeply powerful images and feelings in poems of matchless delicacy and subtlety. This understated approach is what drew me to a poem like “Whitey” in which Campbell couches a rumination on death in what appears to be at first an almost whimsical remembered dialogue with a blackbird (the eponymous Whitey) that used to frequent his garden. Most important for me as a composer, though, was the immediately singable lyricism of the poems. I distinctly recall the way, as I began reading it, “Words and Roses” (the first song, and one of Campbell’s most famous poems), began to suggest musical atmospheres and vocal lines unfolding in my mind like buds of roses unfurling their petals. When poems being to sing themselves to me, I know I have found the right material.

This work was the recipient of the “Director’s Choice Award” in the Boston-International Contempo Festival’s International Composers’ Competition.

• Stephan Prock: Cages for the Wind - hardcopy score 

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• Stephan Prock: Cages for the Wind - downloadable PDF 

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solo clarinet

In many ways this is a companion piece to an earlier work, Vivid for solo trumpet, which also sets a powerful, sexually charged poem by Will Christie. But where Vivid is very often overtly violent and forceful in its gestures, deepwalker is mostly much subtler, almost passive-aggressive in outlook. The opening lines of the poem – “the day is a drum that connects these vocal loops with grey traffic circles bridge after bridge” – are mirrored in the cyclical, sometimes elliptical form of the work, loops and circles that play between registers of the clarinet. Sexual tension and aggression bubble away in the background, periodically rupturing the musical surface with piercing, angular outbursts, sometimes in parallel with the rather tender, fluid lines of the low register, and with the spoken text itself. This violent interplay creates a kind of disordered internal conversation, a bizarre hermetic character opening and shutting her windows; a clarinet of many voices.

Warning: contains coarse language

• Taylor: deepwalker; computer set 

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• Taylor: deepwalker; computer set 

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• Alex Taylor: deepwalker; audio 

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• Alex Taylor: deepwalker 

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Soprano, Flute/Piccolo/Poi , Piano/Poi

As young children, some of us see our parents more as gods than as human beings. Time goes by and the feet of clay may start to emerge, with possibly scary or enigmatic aspects. Finally our parents die, maybe somewhat shrivelled, physically and possibly also spiritually. And how do we feel about all this?

In this brand new song cycle for soprano, flute and piano, we encounter the child’s vividly remembered emotional experiences as the adult protagonist revisits and eventually comes to terms with this.

The connecting of poetry in Maori on a universal theme of childhood and maturity in a New Zealand context, with its expression via classical art song, here produces the sort of work that might always be expected to arise in a society where cultural expression, cross-connection and interactions are increasingly alive, affectionate, meaningful and robust.

• Jenny McLeod: He Whakaahua o Maru (A Portrait of Maru) - hardcopy score & part 

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• Jenny McLeod: He Whakaahua o Maru (A Portrait of Maru) - downloadable PDF 

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5 Singers - Sop (Bubbles), Sop/Mezzo (River), Mezzo (Monica), Bari (Sam), Bass (Billy) 1 Actor (Joe - spoken role) Flute, Clarinet (Bb/A), 2 Violins, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Sound Effect Operator, 1 or 2 additional typewriter players.

• Adams: River Lavalle; computer set 

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• Adams: River Lavalle; computer set 

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• Chris Adams: River Lavalle; video 

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These songs are to honour the astonomer Beatrice Tinsley, who was amongst the first to prove the universe is infintely expanding, and not, as was generally thought, a fixed state. She was born in England, grew up on New Zealand, and was Professor of Astronomy at Yale when she died in 1981 at the age of forty.

• Ross Harris: Songs for Beatrice - downloadable PDF 

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• Ross Harris: Songs for Beatrice - hardcopy score 

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some divisi of all voice parts

These three a cappella folksong settings were written for the 2011 – 2012 NZSSC to sing during their NZ concerts and on their trip to the Ihlombe South Africa Music Festival in July 2012. The texts were selected to reflect the futility and horrors of war, and the dreadful conditions in which our soldiers suffered at Gallipoli. There is an Australian text to acknowledge the ‘A’ in ANZAC. The final setting, ‘Spirit of ANZAC’ is more modern and encourages reflection on the meaning of ANZAC and how fortunate we as a country are for the sacrifice made by our servicemen and women.

• Richard Oswin: Three Gallipoli Settings - hardcopy score 

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• Richard Oswin: Three Gallipoli Settings - downloadable PDF 

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• NZSSC: Akoako i te rangi CD  Year: 2012 

  CD
  
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