Work

Programme Note

Puhake ki te rangi, which translates as spouting to the skies is a celebration of whales, and was written late in 2006 for the New Zealand String Quartet and Richard Nunns as a project undertaken while I was the CNZ/NZSM composer-in-residence, living in the Lilburn House in Wellington.


Although one section is based on a transcription of whale song, there is no programme to the piece – no confrontation with humanity, for instance. The guiding principles were the extreme range of whale song, the changing patterns of their song, and the image, given to me by the late Tungia Baker, of a whale in Campbell Island waters allowing seal pups at play to slide down her flanks over and over again until, tiring of the game, she flipped them gently away.


The taonga puoro (Maori instruments) used in this piece are all made from whale bone or the bone from the albatross, the whale’s avian counterpart. In the order they are played, the taonga are, the percussive tumutumu, made from the jaw of a pilot whale washed up on Farewell Spit, a karanga manu (bird caller) made from an orca tooth, two nguru (flutes) made from the teeth of sperm whales that stranded one in Tory channel and one at Paekakariki, two putorino koiwi toroa (instruments made here from albatross bones, which have two different voices, being played as flute or trumpet), made here from the wingbones of a wandering albatross from the sub-Antarctic islands and a young royal albatross from the Chatham Islands, a nguru made from the cochlea of a hump-backed whale and finally a putorino koiwi toroa, especially made for this piece from the rib of a right whale that beached at Cable Bay. Members of the Quartet play percussive instruments – whalebone tumutumu and tokere (castanets). All these instruments were made by Brian Flintoff.


In the score, the taonga puoro sections are improvised; mostly the quartet parts are notated, but sometimes the players are required to improvise.

Difficulty:

Advanced

Influences:

• Maori - culture
• Flora and fauna - NZ

Performance History

	06 Feb 2007	Premiere performance by the New Zealand String Quartet and Richard Nunns
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	15 Feb 2007	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet with Richard Nunns
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	16 May 2007	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet with Richard Nunns
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	17 Apr 2008	Performed by Richard Nunns (taonga puoro) and the New Zealand String Quartet the Great Hall, Christchurch Arts Centre, Christchurch as part of ’Christopher’s Classics’
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	15 May 2008	Performed by Richard Nunns (taongo puoro) and New Zealand String Quartet at St Andrews Church, Taupo
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	16 May 2008	Performed by Richard Nunns (taonga puoro) and the New Zealand String Quartet at Tongariro School, Turangi
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	23 Oct 2008	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the European Tour 2008 at Franckesche Stiftungen, Halle, Germany
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	28 Oct 2008	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the European Tour 2008 at Artur Rubinstein Philharmonic, Lodz, Poland
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	30 Oct 2008	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the European Tour 2008 at Furstenberg Palace, Prague, Czech Republic
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	10 Nov 2008	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the European Tour 2008 at Cowdray Hall, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	12 Nov 2008	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the European Tour 2008 at Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	21 Mar 2009	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the US Tour 2009 at Reading Area Community College, Reading PA, United States of America
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	27 Mar 2009	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the US Tour 2009 at Library of Congress, Washington DC, United States of America
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	03 Apr 2009	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet as part of the US Tour 2009 at Luther College, Decorah, United States of America
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	29 Mar 2011	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet with Richard Nunns at Wesley Uniting Church, in Tasmania, Australia
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	30 Mar 2011	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet with Richard Nunns at St John’s Anglican Church, in Tasmania, Australia
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns
	13 Jul 2011	Performed by the New Zealand String Quartet with Richard Nunns at Haberdashers’ Hall in London, as part of the 2011 City of London Festival
		New Zealand String Quartet    Richard Nunns