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During 2007 I spent a lot of time making field recordings of background noise in Paris, and analysing the spectral and rhythmic content of those recordings. I found the more I listened to my recordings, the more musical material I found hidden in these background hisses and hums, chatterings and otherwise banal noises: rhythms, mysterious melodies, energies and harmonic tensions. While working on this commission for the NZSO, I decided to try to capture the intrinsic musical essences I could hear in my field recordings, and interpret those sounds in an orchestral context, with the juxtaposition of the original noise recordings finding musical relationships in the orchestral counterpart. The resulting piece is a conjuring of various energies, or furies, caught in the background noise of Paris, and finding their way into the back of my throat to be sung into a quiet fury.

Lissa Meridan

• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; electronic part 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; electronic part 

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2222; 42211; 3 perc.; 4 cymbals; cl; strings

It is impossible to live in Wellington without paying attention to its environment, or the environment paying attention to you. Equally, it is impossible to leave without carrying an interior imprint of its sharp green hills, scudding clouds, dragon sea, and particularly for me, those days when it suddenly all stops leaving the city suspended between a hush of blue sky and a seemingly frozen harbour. Blue Kisses Green is somehow ‘about’ this elemental ferociousness, delicacy, and beauty.

• Dugal McKinnon: Blue Kisses Green (Mono) 

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• McKinnon: Blue Kisses Green (Stereo) 

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• McKinnon: Blue Kisses Green 

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• McKinnon: Blue Kisses Green; computer-set 

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• McKinnon: Blue Kisses Green; computer-set 

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• McKinnon: Blue Kisses Green; computer-set 

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piccolo, flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon 1 and 2, 3 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, 2 percussionists (crash cymbals, suspended cymbals, roto-toms, claves, rain stick, vibraphone), harp, strings and narrator

“I enjoyed performing and recording Eulogy very much. Such a warmth of texture and harmonies which created a sympathetic palette for Olivia Macassey’s word painting” – Kenneth Young

My decision to set this text for orchestra initially arose, not only from reading the poem and appreciating it for what it is, but also from the recent passing of a dear musician colleague with whom I had collaborated on many early jazz projects.

However, at time of writing, I have become most un-nerved by the senseless loss of young life that has been occurring with alarming regularity at a couple of schools I have recently taught at. It was with these tremendously sad, sudden passings in mind that I completed my work on the piano short score of Eulogy, before commencing work on its orchestration.

Yvette Audain

• Audain: Eulogy; computer-set 

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• Audain: Eulogy; computer-set 

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• Two works by Yvette Audain 

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• The APO Composers' Workshop 2010 

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fls(recs),obs(rec),cls (saxs), bsns (b.cls); tpts (saxes/hns) tbns (hns/tubas), piano, 2 perc, strings, tape (most players need extra percussion)

Kihikihi was written for an amateur orchestra with players of widely different abilities, therefore it is suitable for anything from a secondary school to a professional symphony orchestra. The conductor must have a suitably theatrical approach.

• de Castro-Robinson: Kihikihi; facsimile 

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Instrumentation is very flexible: desc recorders, fls, obs, cls, bns, hns, trps, trms, alto and tenor saxs, 3timp,perc: (4 players) 2xylo,2glock,bs-dr,wd-bl,cym; strs (vln 1,2,3)

Four easy pieces for amateur or school orchestra describing the following moods: ‘Ecstatic’, ‘Sad’, ‘Angry’ and ‘Happy’. The music is designed for school-age performers and features simple and strong rhythms. The work was commissioned by The Christchurch School of Instrumental Music, for use as a massed item at their annual combined concert.

• Ritchie A.: Moods for orchestra; facsimile 

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includes video images

I have been haunted by the Cambodian genocide ever since reading Dit Phran’s account of his experiences during the Khmer Rouge years, vividly portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. More recently I’ve read biographies of Pol Pot by Philip Short and David Chandler. In 1995, at MOMA in New York, I chanced upon a devastating photographic exhibition of selected portraits from the comprehensive collection of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, where an estimated 14,000 men, women and children passed through its gates to be photographed, interrogated, tortured and finally executed as perceived enemies of Pol Pot’s violent, paranoid regime.

In 2007 I was able to visit Cambodia for the first time. I made daily visits to Tuol Sleng to sit among the portraits and to sense the presence of the victims of the brutal genocide. Mok Bhon is but one of these victims. His face is difficult to read, but his eyes burn into me.

What is the lesson of this dreadful history that unleashed an evil that destroyed one in five of the whole Cambodian population? How can such evil exist in a modern world?

Explanations for phenomena like S-21 are embedded in our capacities to order and obey each other, to bond with each other against strangers, to lose ourselves inside groups, to yearn for perfection and approval, and to vent our anger and confusion, especially when we are encouraged to do so by people we respect, onto other, often helpless people. To find the source of the evil that was enacted at S-21 on a daily basis, we need look no further than ourselves.
David Chandler, Voices from S-21

My Name is Mok Bhon uses transcriptions I made of two genres of traditional Cambodian music: a funeral song played by a trai leak ensemble (singer, gongs, drum, gong-chime circle, and double reed sralai), and a plaintive 3-note melody played on the sneng, an instrument consisting of an animal horn with a reed inserted in its side. The performance of this work is accompanied by images I shot at Tuol Sleng, assembled as a video with the expert help of Andrew Brettell.

I am grateful to the following: Sokun for recording his voice for me, Sokha Mey for translation, and Anton Isselhadt for inviting me to Cambodia in the first place. The work was commissioned for NZSO by my good friend Jack Richards, who wishes to make a dedication to the memory of his friend Kong Orn, another victim of the Khmer Rouge purges.

Jack Body

• Body: My Name is Mok Bhon; computer-set 

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• Jack Body: My Name is Mok Bhon 

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