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Gillian Whitehead  

Hinetekakara

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 2004
for voice, taonga puoro, and bassoon

  • Instrumentation
    Voice used for waiata; Taonga puoro includes: Putatara, Putorino Matai, Pumotomoto, Pupuharakeke, Pu Kaea, and Nguru Rakau Maire
  • Programme Note

    Hinetekakara is the ancestress of Aroha Yates-Smith, the kaikaranga (singer) who provided the idea and the text of this piece. Hinetekakara lived on the shores of Lake Rotorua with Ihenga, her husband or father, an eponymous ancestor of the Te Arawa people, when the land was still being settled after the arrival of the Te Arawa canoe from central Polynesia. The four cadenzas, for bassoon, alto flute, flute, cello and bassoon, and bassoon link improvised sections, in which all the instruments participate. The singer initially invokes, accompanied by putatara (conch shell trumpet), the spirit of Hinetekakara, then addresses rituals following the death of her future father-in-law (with putorino), and then the birth of her son (with pumotomoto, an instrument used to assist at child-birth). A voiceless improvisation on pupu harakeke (flax snail), an instrument presaging danger, is followed by Ihenga’s anguished lament as he finds the murdered body of Hinetekakara by the lake, by the place named for her, Ohinemutu, meaning the end of the woman. Finally, she is farewelled as her spirit returns to the afterworld.

  • Availability

Gillian Whitehead  

Hotspur

Duration: 35' 00" Year: 1980
for mezzo soprano and chamber ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    clarinet, clarinet/bass-clarinet, violin/viola, cello, percussion (marimba, 9 drums in high to low sequence, drum of fluctuating pitch, bass drum, 5 suspended cymbals, ching - Thai finger cymbals, bell tree, rasp, 2 woodblocks, 3 temple blocks, wood chimes)
  • Programme Note

    This monodrama for mezzo soprano and chamber sextet, commissioned by Northern Arts UK, tells of the 14th century North of England warrior Henry Percy (Hotspur), seen through the eyes of Elizabeth Mortimer, in a striking ballad sequence written by Fleur Adcock.

    Whitehead’s imaginative score combines exotic and arresting instrumental colours, a strong dramatic vocal line (often with flamboyant flourishes) and an admirable overall conception of the mood changes and tonal graduation of the work. (William Dart, NZ Listener)

    She has the rare gift of knowing when to us nightmarish vehemences and when to be utterly straightforward and calm. (Roger Covell, Sydney Morning Herald).

  • Availability

Jack Body  

In the Curve of Song

 Year: 2003
for voice, tape, viola, flute/ piccolo and four percussionists

Jonathan Besser  

Introduction for an Unfinished Sweet

Duration: 03' 00" Year: 1978
for soprano, lute, viol and recorder

Pepe Becker  

...of peace from war...

 Year: 1985
for soprano, oboe, organ, narrator

Jeff Henderson  

square pig

 Year: 2001
an improvisation by sync / shed with vocal, chamber ensemble and electronics

Helen Bowater  

The Frivolous Cake

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1991
for mezzo, flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, fretless bass, cello and percussion

Jordan Reyne  

The Washing Machine Song

Duration: 04' 00" Year: 2000
for voice and electronica

David Hamilton  

Two Songs of Travel

 Year: 1992
for high voice, violin and piano

  • Instrumentation
    violin may be replaced by flute or clarinet; unison voices could perform this also
  • Programme Note

    These two songs were originally the third and fourth movements of my choral cycle Ports of Call written in early 1992 for the Auckland choir ‘Viva Voce’. When soprano Fiona Ferens approached me requesting a couple of songs for a recital I decided that re-workings of these pieces might prove suitable. The texts are both nineteenth century English ones, and the musical style is deliberately ‘mock Victorian’, even down to a passing hint of a well-known song from that era. The first song tells of the plight of being in Rotterdam while your loved one is still in England, whereas the second one presents the attitude of the foreigner in pre-twentieth century Japan.

  • Availability