Sub Navigation

Search Music:

Search for music by typing a word or phrase in the box below or by selecting one or more categories from the list on the side.

Or search for products by selecting an option below, and typing a word or phrase in the box above

  • Scores
  • CDs and DVDs
  • Downloads
  • Education Resources

Michael Norris  

dirty pixels

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2004
for piano trio

  • Programme Note

    dirty pixels was written in response to two stimuli: an exhibition of the same name (curator, Stella Brennan) in the Adam Art Gallery featuring New Zealand artwork of a certain rough-hewn, ‘gritty’ nature; and hearing the work Jagden und Formen by German composer Wolfgang Rihm, an unremittingly wild and preposterous discourse of extremes.

    These two stimuli caused something of an aesthetic dilemma: leaving behind my rather French fondness for euphonious washes of sound, I became interested in the characteristics of ‘roughness’ and ‘raggedness’, and in how a ‘pure’ conceptual scheme, such as the quite systematic construction I had formulated just prior to starting this piece, became ‘dirtied’ by intuition, by the exigencies of the material and by the reality of having it performed.

    Michael Norris
    Notes taken from The NZTrio – Spark Morrison Music Trust MMT2066

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

Foundry

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2004
for chamber septet

  • Instrumentation
    alto flute/flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, horn, trombone, piano/celesta, violin, cello
  • Programme Note

    This piece is a musical foundry. My focus is on metal: sawn, hammered, melted, poured, moulded, cast, polished… The melodic material is based on pitch analyses of the sounds of drilling, hammering and sawing. I want to melt the material down to a metallic gleam. Foundry was commissioned by Continuum with funds from the Laidlaw Foundation.

  • Availability

John Rimmer  

Fragile Earth

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2004
for oboe and string trio

  • Instrumentation
    oboe, violin, viola, cello
  • Programme Note

    Fragile Earth

    Fragile Earth is a conservationist’s lament and was inspired by the anti-nuclear poem “No Ordinary Sun” written in the early 1970’s by the celebrated poet Hone Tuwhare.

    The piece presents a brooding chant which undergoes variation by means of rhythmic and textural contrasts, organic growth and fragmentation.

    Fragile Earth was commissioned by Tom and Anne Morris for the Ensemble Philharmonia and first performed on 20 November 2004 at the Auckland Public Library auditorium.

    Fragile Earth

    Fragile Earth is a conservationist’s lament and was inspired by the anti-nuclear poem “No Ordinary Sun” written in the early 1970’s by the celebrated poet Hone Tuwhare.

    The piece presents a brooding chant which undergoes variation by means of rhythmic and textural contrasts, organic growth and fragmentation.

    Fragile Earth was commissioned by Tom and Anne Morris for the Ensemble Philharmonia and first performed on 20 November 2004 at the Auckland Public Library auditorium.

  • Availability

Philip Dadson  

Peel the unseen

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2004
improvisation for zitherum and ostifans

Philip Brownlee  

Te Hau o Tawhirimatea

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2004
for flute and taonga puoro

  • Instrumentation
    Flutes: piccolo/alto flute; Taonga puoro: putorino, koauau ponga ihu, pumotomoto
  • Programme Note

    Te Hau o Tawhirimatea is dedicated to Richard Nunns and Bridget Douglas. The music aims to create a space in which the musicians, and the voices of their instruments, may speak together. The musical space is flexible, encouraging spontaneous dialogue between the various instrumental voices. Tawhirimatea, the wind god, child of Earth and Sky, represents powerful elemental forces, but he is also capable of gentle playfulness. Te hau refers also to human breath, the force which animates the wind instruments. From the mingling of breath, sweet voices are brought into being.

  • Availability