By:

• Victoria Kelly

Duration:

03' 00"

Samples

	Recording (1792k)	0:00-1:00© Victoria Kelly / Stephen de Pledge
	Recording (467k)	From 0:31 - 1:31© RNZ Concert
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Availability

• This work has a score and 4 recordings

Programme Note

Everyone of my generation remembers the ‘Goodnight Kiwi’ – the animation that used to signal the end of television for the night in the days when we only had two channels to choose from.

I remember the rare occasions I was allowed to stay up late enough to see the Goodnight Kiwi carry out his nightly duties. It was always way past my bedtime and therefore overwhelmingly exciting. But I always felt very melancholy afterwards. I would lie awake for hours thinking about the kiwi shutting down the power and climbing up to sleep in the sky. It seemed so final.

As I was composing this piece in 2004, my mother was approaching the end of a long illness and she and I were going through a process of looking through photographs, telling the stories that accompanied them and wondering what lay ahead. It made me remember long summers, lawn-mowers, barbeques, pohutukawa trees at the beach and a time in life that wasn’t weighed down with responsibilities or fears for the future. This piece is an emotional landscape that tries to evoke that feeling of nostalgia, presenting childhood memories into which the future begins to creep.

I imagined my mother was setting off on the same journey as the kiwi… wandering through the building, shutting down the power and then climbing up to sleep in the sky. I wrote this piece for her.

Commissioned:

Commissioned by Stephen de Pledge

• Stephen De Pledge

Influences

• Children/youth

Dedication:

Dedicated to the composer's mother

Funders:

• Creative New Zealand

Performance History

	23 Jan 2004	Premiered by Stephen De Pledge (piano) at Wigmore Hall, London 23 January 2004
		Stephen De Pledge
	30 Mar 2004	Performed by Stephen de Pledge (piano) at Helen Young Studio, Auckland for Radio New Zealand Concert
		Stephen De Pledge
	27 Feb 2008	Performed by Stephen De Pledge at the Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington, as part of the 2008 New Zealand International Arts Festival. See the performance on Youtube.
		Stephen De Pledge